lic.” Despite such a clear statement, the committee
was divided about racial propaganda in literary and
artistic works. While Gregory was part of the
NAACP drama committee that arranged for
Rachel’s debut, the play also spurred him to pursue
less political and more aesthetic dramatic ventures.
He was the Howard University faculty member
who was instrumental in the development of the
college’s drama department.
Grimké’s dramas and short fiction were insis-
tently political. In works like Mara,her second and
final play, and in short stories like “The Closing
Door,” protagonists struggled to control their bod-
ies in a society that preyed upon the black body
and subjected it to lynching and psychological tor-
tures. Grimké revisited themes of self-sacrifice, in-
fanticide, and abstinence. Scholars continue to
discuss the circumstances that led to the publica-
tion of “The Closing Door” in an 1919 issue of
Birth Control Review. The journal, which was
founded by Margaret Sanger in 1917, provided in-
formation about the birth control movement,
reprinted Sanger’s speeches, and addressed a num-
ber of topics relating to women’s health.
Grimké’s short story revisited Rachel’s themes
of self-restraint and suppression of maternal de-
sires. While it was not a conventional message
about birth control, the editors invited Grimké to
provide another story. She submitted “Goldie,” a
story that returned to the terrors of lynching, in-
spired by a horrific and documented account of a
Georgia lynch mob’s murder of a pregnant woman
and her unborn child.
Grimké published widely in the periodical press
before and throughout the Harlem Renaissance.
Her poems were featured in the Boston Sunday
Globeand Boston Transcriptas well as other newspa-
pers in Virginia such as the Norfolk Gazette.In the
1920s she published several poems in Opportunity,
including “Little Grey Dreams,” “Death,” “Dusk,”
and “The Black Finger.” Her poems were included
in important anthologies, most notably The New
Negro(1925) edited by Alain Locke and CAROLING
DUSK(1927) edited by COUNTEECULLEN.
The themes of Grimké’s poetry contrast the
sobering themes of self-sacrifice, infanticide, and
sexual abstinence in her plays and fiction. The ma-
jority of her poems revolve around romance, al-
though they do focus on longing and unrequited
love. Works such as “El Beso,” “The Eyes of My
Regret,” and “A Mona Lisa” reflect Grimké’s
deeply romantic sensibility and her unabashed
study of human emotions. Like other poets of the
Harlem Renaissance, Grimké invokes the natural
world and uses it to generate powerful metaphors
of female desire and loss.
Scholars have concluded that Grimké, who
never wed or bore children, was a lesbian who was
unable to fully explore her sexuality in early 20th-
century America. Gloria Hull notes that the sub-
jects of Grimké’s love poems are women and that
these works provide valuable hints about the poet’s
personal relationships and more general perspectives
on relationships. In her detailed critical study of
Grimké, Hull cites an unpublished poem in which
the speaker declares, “Rose whose heart unfolds, red
petaled / Prick her slow heart’s stir / Tell her white,
gold, red my love is— / And for her, —for her.” Hull
and scholar Carolivia Herron concur that Grimké
was involved with MAMIEBURRILL, one of her
schoolmates. Despite Grimké’s request that Burrill
be her wife, however, the intense relationship did
not last.
Angelina Weld Grimké passed away on 10 June- She was one of the more enigmatic figures to
contribute to the Harlem Renaissance. She en-
riched the literary and artistic communities of
Boston and Washington, D.C. Her works reflected a
powerful feminist political aesthetic and positioned
her at the center of deliberate Harlem Renaissance
debates about literary activism and racial uplift.
Bibliography
Angelina Weld Grimké Papers, Manuscript Division,
Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard Uni-
versity Library.
Grimké, Angelina W. “A Biographical Sketch of
Archibald Grimké.” Opportunity, a Journal of Negro
Life(3 Feb. 1925): 44–47.
Herron, Carolivia, ed. Selected Works of Angelina Weld
Grimké.New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Hull, Gloria T. Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writ-
ers of the Harlem Renaissance.Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987.Grimké, Archibald(1849–1930)
The father of Harlem Renaissance poet and play-
wright ANGELINAEMILYWELDGRIMKÉwas one ofGrimké, Archibald 205