Francis James Grimké

Francis James Grimké (October 10, 1850– October 11, 1937) was an American Presbyterian minister in Washington, DC who was prominent in working for equal rights for African Americans. He was active in the Niagara Movement and helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Francis Grimké was the second of three sons born to Henry Grimké, a white (European-American) slaveholder of Charleston, South Carolina, and Nancy Weston, an enslaved woman of European and African descent. After becoming a widower, the senior Grimke began a relationship with Weston. It appeared to be a caring one; he moved with her out of the city to his plantation where they and their family would have more privacy. She was his official domestic partner in the house. Both Henry and Nancy gave Francis and his brothers -- Archibald and John—their first lessons in reading and writing.

Henry Grimké had come from a large family. Among them were two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, who had become abolitionists and moved to the North to join activists there. His other siblings continued to represent and carry out the expected roles, as he mostly did, of their prominent slaveholding family of Charleston.

Henry Grimke died in 1852. As he was dying, Henry tried to protect his second family by willing Nancy, who was pregnant with their third child, and their two sons Archibald and Francis to his son and heir Montague Grimké, by his first wife. He directed that they "be treated as members of the family."

Henry's sister Eliza, executor of his will, brought the family to Charleston and allowed them to live as if they were free, but she did not aid them financially. Nancy Weston took in laundry and did other work; when the boys were old enough, they attended a public school with free blacks. In 1860 Montague "claimed them as slaves," bringing the boys into his home as servants. Later he hired out both Archibald and Francis. During the American Civil War, Francis ran off and became a valet for a Confederate Army Officer stationed at Castle Pinckney, a jail for Union Soldiers. Francis was found and jailed for a time before being returned to Montague Grimké, who sold him to another Confederate Oficer. Archibald ran away and hid for two years with relatives until after the end of the Civil War. Montague never provided well for his half-brothers or for their mother.

After the American Civil War ended, the three Grimké boys attended freedmen's schools, where their talents were recognized by the teachers. They gained support to send Archibald and Francis to the North. They studied at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, established for the education of blacks.

Francis and his family went through many hardships afterward, as he had not provided for them financially. After the Civil War, which disrupted family fortunes further, Francis and Archibald were enrolled at Morris Street school, part of the Charleston public schools, a segregated system set up for the first time during the Reconstruction era by a Republican-dominated, biracial legislature. Frank then went North to Stoneham, Massachusetts where he first stayed with a Dr. John Brown, and then with a Mr. and Mrs. Lyman Dyke. The brothers were then sponsored by Mrs. Pillsbury, sister-in-law of Parker Pillsbury, for higher education at Lincoln University. It was a historically black college founded in Pennsylvania for the education of blacks. They received tuition from a church committee, but had no money for books and clothing.

In 1868, Angelina Grimké noted Archibald Grimké's surname in The Anti-Slavery Standard, after a speech of his was reported. Because of the unusual name, she wrote to learn whether he was related to her family. After learning that he was their nephew and about his brothers, Angelina and Sarah officially acknowledged the three mixed-race boys as family. The sisters supported the three boys while they were in college, and opened their home to them. The youngest brother, John Grimké, did not take to education and chose to stay in Charleston with their mother Nancy Weston.

Francis and Archibald both graduated from Lincoln University in 1870. He went on to graduate studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1878. Grimké became ordained as a Presbyterian minister.

In December 1878, Grimké married Charlotte Forten, an abolitionist, teacher, and diarist. Charlotte was the granddaughter of James Forten, a prominent member of the free black elite of Philadelphia. Among her acquaintances were many members of the national abolitionist movement, including William Lloyd Garrison, Sarah Parker Remond, John Whittier, and Wendell Phillips. Charlotte was 41 and Francis was about 13 years her junior when they married. In 1880, they had one daughter, Theodora Cornelia, who died as an infant.

Grimké began his ministry at the prominent 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Logan Circle, Washington, D.C., a major African-American congregation. He led that congregation until 1885, and was active throughout the community in Washington. He then moved to a church in Jacksonville, Florida, but soon returned to his former charge.

His elder brother Archibald was appointed as consul to the Dominican Republic from 1894-1898. During that time, Archibald's daughter Angelina Weld Grimké stayed with Grimké and his wife. Angelina later became a teacher, and a prominent writer and activist in her own right.

He was a participant in the March 5, 1897 meeting to celebrate the memory of Frederick Douglass which founded the American Negro Academy led by Alexander Crummell.

Except for a few years' sojourn at a church in Jacksonville, Florida, Grimké continued to lead the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. until 1928. He died in 1937, more than twenty years after Charlotte.

Francis Grimké said "Race prejudice can't be talked down, it must be lived down."