Angelina Weld Grimke, Boston

"Yet here amid the wistful sounds of leaves,

A black-hued gruesome something swings and swings; Laughter it knew and joy in little things

Till man’s hate ended all. –And so man weaves.

And God, how slow, how very slow weaves He—

Was Christ Himself not nailed to a tree?"

Poet and playwright Angelina Weld Grimké was born in 1880 into a prominent biracial family of civil-rights activists; the noted abolitionists Angelina and Sarah Grimké were her great-aunts, and her father was the son of a wealthy white aristocrat and a slave. From 1898 to 1902, she lived at 598 Columbus Avenue while attending Boston Normal School of Gymnastics.

Grimké's drama and poetry address racism and the plight of blacks in America. She is best known for her poems, some of which were published in W.E.B. Du Bois's Crisis journal and ultimately anthologized by Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. More recently, her bisexuality has garnered renewed attention from LGBT literary scholars.