Charlotte Forten Grimke: A Living Witness (1st Black Female Writer at The Atlantic Magazine)

[Celerity]

http://www.journeysoulfully.co/whereareourjournals/charlottefortengrimke





Charlotte Forten Grimke was a Philly, Pennsylvania Black woman, poet, abolitionist, teacher, and diarist. As a freed Black woman in the mid-late nineteenth century Forten’s pedigree was one of privilege in her day. To add to the rarity of her social class Charlotte was also from a wealthy Black family (her grandfather was a successful sail salesman) of influential socialite abolitionists who and associated with prominent figures of the day. "Forten's paternal aunt Margaretta Forten worked in the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society along with her sisters Harriet Forten Purvis and Sarah Louisa Forten Purvis. Forten's grandparents were Philadelphia abolitionists James Forten, Sr. and his wife Charlotte Vandine Forten, who were also active in the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society." (Civil War Talk)

Despite their status, their Blackness rendered them social pariahs: the family experienced exclusion from the majority of white social spaces, institutions, and leisure activities (restaurants, ice cream shops, museums, etc.). This anomaly of a juxtaposition of class, education, and free Blackness during the era of slavery and the pervasive prevalence of prejudice would exact a mental conundrum on Charlotte’s psychological navigation through womanhood. Charlotte spent the majority of her adolescence in her grandfather’s house, kept out of segregated schools and homeschooled via private tutor. By being so sheltered and concentrated in that controlled environment, Charlotte would become a well-read polyglot. Though protected from sociocultural racism consequently missed out on the formative social interactions/ experiences most young girls have in childhood. She was introspective, quiet, and very accustomed to being alone. It was this isolation that caused Forten’s father to send her to the Higginson Grammar School in Salem, Mass. where Charlotte started her first journal.



In her first journal, Forten drafted poetry, reflected on her Blackness and privilege that did not serve as much protection from racism and segregation; she ruminated through her privilege as an upper middle class Black women whose people were experiencing the cruelties of slavery and other grave injustices; and she especially processed her daily experiences in racism there in Massachusetts. Later in her time in MA Charlotte would contribute essays and poems to local papers, no doubt encouraged by her peer and penpal Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. She’d eventually become the first Black teacher to be hired in Massachussets. Some suspect Grimke was the first Black teacher to teach white students in US history…



Grimke kept journals pretty much all of her life, the bulk of which were for the decade between 1854 and 1864 (minus 2 years 1860-62) as there was a HUGE gap of 20 years between her final two journals. Her initial objective in keeping a journal was to autobiographically chronicle her personal development. Charlotte’s journals are dynamic explorations of herself against her surroundings as a part of the Black elite and in the trenches and frontline for abolition. The bulk of her early entries are her inner workings of daily navigating the tensions and confrontations with whiteness' hatred and ignorance; hoping for retribution to be seen in her day.







snip