Grimké, Angelina Weld, 1880-1958

Angelina Weld Grimké; poet, dramatist, journalist, teacher, essayist, radical feminist and lesbian icon; born born on February 27th, 1880 in Boston, Massachusetts; raised in a biracial family with a considerable history of social activism; widely considered to be the first woman of color to have a play professionally produced in the United States;father, Archibald Grimké was a prominent African-American lawyer; mother, Sarah Stanley was white and a successful writer; Stanley’s family disapproved of marrage; in 1883, Stanley left her husband and took young Grimké with her to live in the midwest; in 1887, Grimké was sent back to live with her father, and her contact with her mother became extremely limited; Grimké was educated at private schools in Massachusetts; at the age of thirteen, Grimké began writing poetry; first poem was published in 1893; continued to publish her poetry throughout high school; enrolled in the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics supplementing her education with classes at Harvard University; after completing her studies, she and her father moved to Washington, D.C in 1902;
Grimké worked as a teacher in Washington D.C for twenty-eight years: taught at Armstrong Manual Training School in both the physical education and English departments; moved to M Street High School (later renamed Dunbar High School) for Black students, 1907; one of her pupils was future poet and playwright May Miller; published a large output of essays, short stories, and poems; garnered critical acclaim for her poetry; The NAACP put out a call for plays by Black authors as a vehicle to rally support against the film, The Birth of Nation; Grimké answered that call with her groundbreaking three-act drama, Rachel (originally entitled Blessed Are the Barren); regarded as the first play by an African American woman to ever be produced professionally; first production at the Miner Normal School, a teachers college for African Americans, 1916; produced at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, 1917; published as a book in 1920; firts UK production ain 2014 at Finborough Theatre in London

Angelina Weld Grimké; Born February 27, 1880, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Died June 10, 1958 (aged 78), New York City, USA; journalist, teacher, playwright and poet who came to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance. She was one of the first American women of color to have a play publicly performed; Her father, Archibald Grimké, was a lawyer and of mixed race, son of a white slave owner and an enslaved mixed-race woman of color. He was the second African American to graduate from Harvard Law School. Her mother, Sarah Stanley, was European American, from a Midwestern middle-class family; Angelina was named for her father's paternal white aunt Angelina Grimké Weld, who with her sister Sarah Grimké had brought him and his brothers into her family after learning about them after his father's death; Grimké wrote essays, short stories and poems which were published in The Crisis, the newspaper of the NAACP, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois; and Opportunity. They were also collected in anthologies of the Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro, Caroling Dusk, and Negro Poets and Their Poems. Her more well-known poems include "The Eyes of My Regret", "At April", "Trees" and "The Closing Door". While living in Washington, DC, she was included among the figures of the Harlem Renaissance, as her work was published in its journals and she became connected to figures in its circle. Some critics place her in the period before the Renaissance. During that time, she counted the poet Georgia Douglas Johnson as one of her friends; Grimké wrote Rachel – originally titled Blessed Are the Barren – one of the first plays to protest lynching and racial violence;