Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man's

Hear, O seekers of justice, the mighty words of Angelina Grimké, one of the first daughters of America to speak openly against slavery and for the rights of women: “Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man’s wrong, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education.” In these words she bound together two struggles—the bondage of the enslaved and the subjugation of women—declaring that both spring from the same poisoned root: the denial of human dignity through the withholding of freedom and knowledge.

What Grimké calls a peculiar sympathy is the recognition of shared suffering. Both women and enslaved Black men were told they were weak in mind, incapable of reason, fit only for service and obedience. Both were excluded from the halls of power, denied the chance to learn, to speak, to rise. She declared that in their shared wrong, they must also share solidarity—that the cry of the oppressed is not divided, but united. To uplift one without the other is to build a house with only half its foundation.

Her words must be placed in their origin: the fiery decades before the Civil War. Born into a slaveholding family in South Carolina, Angelina Grimké turned against the very system that had raised her. With her sister Sarah, she moved North and joined the abolitionist movement, daring to speak before men and women alike—a scandal in her day. She saw with piercing clarity that the chains of slavery and the chains upon women’s minds were forged of the same iron. To fight one was to fight the other.

Consider the example of Sojourner Truth, a Black woman who had endured both slavery and the scorn of sexism. In 1851, she stood before a convention of women’s rights and declared, “Ain’t I a woman?” Her speech, like Grimké’s, tore down the falsehoods of inferiority. She reminded the world that she could labor, think, and speak as well as any man. Her life embodied the very kinship Grimké proclaimed: that the struggles of the enslaved and of women were intertwined, and that only together could they achieve freedom.

The heart of Grimké’s lament is in the denial of education. For to withhold learning is to keep the mind in chains as surely as iron keeps the body captive. Enslaved men were forbidden to read, lest they awaken to their rights. Women were denied the “liberal education” given to men, lest they question the roles imposed upon them. Both were kept in ignorance to preserve a hierarchy of domination. Grimké saw this clearly, and she named it as a wrong that demanded redress.

Her words also carry a timeless warning. Whenever one group is told they are less intelligent, less capable, less deserving of learning, injustice thrives. This is not only a relic of her age; it echoes into ours. Discrimination, whether by race, gender, or class, often hides behind the mask of false ideas about who is “worthy” of knowledge. Grimké’s cry remains urgent: that education must be the right of all, and that denying it is the first step toward oppression.

Therefore, O children of tomorrow, take this charge: if you are granted education, do not take it for granted. Recognize the long struggle waged so that women and men of every color might learn freely. Stand in solidarity with all who are still denied this gift, for their struggle is bound to your own. Let sympathy become action: support schools, defend equality, lift up voices that are silenced.

The final word is this: as Grimké has spoken, so must we remember. The struggles of women and of oppressed peoples are not separate but united. Both were denied dignity, both were accused of inferiority, both were starved of education. But through solidarity, through learning, through the insistence on truth, they rose. Let us rise with them, and never cease until all humanity is free, equal, and enlightened.