A Hundred Times More

A Hundred Times More is a musical celebration of Sarah and Angelina Grimke and Sarah Mapps Douglass, women who helped to end slavery and start the women’s movement. Sarah and Angelina Grimke were born (1792 and 1805) into a wealthy, slave-owning family in South Carolina. Among all the white people they knew, including the fourteen Grimke children, these two sisters alone could not abide slavery. Growing up at odds with their family and society, they eventually left home (an extraordinary thing for unmarried women to do in those days) and moved to Philadelphia. There they met Sarah Mapps Douglass, a black abolitionist, and connected with the abolitionist community.

The sisters’ passionate opposition to slavery, their experiences as southerners, and their talent for speaking and writing led the abolitionist movement to take them in as speakers—the first women to become agents for the abolitionist movement. While the Grimkes became notorious as women assuming the man’s role of public reformer, female anti-slavery societies like the one founded by Douglass labored behind the scenes to collect anti-slavery petition signatures and raise money. Unwilling to accept a gender code that prevented them from doing all they could to end slavery, the Grimkes, Sarah Douglass, and others pressed the issue. Their efforts led directly to the first American convention for women’s rights in 1848.

2019 is a doubly significant year to remember women like the Grimkes and Douglass. The 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote, was approved by congress in 1919. In June 1920 it achieved ratification by the states and became law. Four hundred years ago, in 1619, the first slave ship arrived in the American colonies. Sadly, the courageous work of these women against slavery and racism still speaks to issues in America today.