Entry for Charlotte Forten Grimké in World Religions and Spirituality Project.

Excerpt:

Charlotte Louise Bridges Forten [Image at right] was born on August 17, 1837 at 92 Lombard Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the home of her grandparents, a leading free Black family in the city that was active in the abolitionist movement (Winch 2002:280). She was the grandchild of James and Charlotte Forten, and the only child of their son Robert Bridges Forten and his first wife, Mary Virginia Wood Forten, who died of tuberculosis when Charlotte was three years old. Named after her grandmother, Charlotte was a fourth-generation free Black woman on her paternal side (Stevenson 1988:3). Her grandfather was the eminent James Forten, a reformer and antislavery activist who owned a successful sail-making business in Philadelphia, at one point amassing a fortune of more than $100,000, a huge sum for the times. Charlotte Forten grew up in relative economic security, was privately tutored, traveled widely, and enjoyed a variety of social and cultural activities (Duran 2011:90). Her extended family was deeply committed to ending slavery and combating racism. James Forten played a central role in the American Anti-Slavery Society and was a friend and supporter of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879). The Forten women helped found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Her aunts, Sarah, Margaretta, and Harriet Forten, used their intellectual gifts to advance the antislavery movement (Stevenson 1988:8).