We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down.

Hear, O keepers of justice, the cry of Angelina Grimké, daughter of the South yet warrior for freedom, who declared: “We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down.” In this fiery utterance, she speaks not of destruction but of transformation—the holy overturning of a corrupt order where slavery and silence reigned. To turn the world upside down is to expose the false foundations of power and to replace them with truth and righteousness.

For Grimké and her sisters, the battle was twofold. They fought against the monstrous evil of slavery, which chained millions of Black men, women, and children in bondage. And they fought against the silencing of women, who were told their place was not in the pulpit, nor the press, nor the halls of politics. To be an Abolition Woman was to defy both master and patriarch, to claim the right to speak for liberty though the world branded it scandal.

Consider the scene in 1837, when Angelina Grimké addressed the Massachusetts Legislature—the first woman to ever do so. Her presence alone was thunder, her voice a storm, for she spoke on behalf of the enslaved, denouncing injustice before men who had long denied her very right to speak. Many mocked her, others condemned her, but none could silence the power of her words. Truly, she was turning the world upside down, not with armies, but with conscience.

So too did her companions in the cause—Sarah Grimké, Lucretia Mott, and later Frederick Douglass—declare that justice for the enslaved and justice for women were not separate struggles, but one. In their unity they revealed a profound truth: that no chain is truly broken until all chains are shattered. The world they challenged called them unnatural, improper, even dangerous. Yet in their danger lay the hope of freedom.

Therefore, let this wisdom endure: to turn the world upside down is the sacred task of those who confront injustice. Grimké’s cry is not a boast but a prophecy—that when women rise to join the battle for liberation, no power on earth can preserve the old order. Her words remind us that true change always feels like upheaval, but what is overturned is not the world itself—it is oppression, silence, and fear. And from that turning, justice is born.