Charlotte Forten was an abolitionist, educator, writer, poet, women’s rights activist and Salem State University's first African American graduate. Her diaries written before the end of the Civil War have been published in numerous editions in the 20th century and are significant as a rare record of the life of a free Black woman in the antebellum North. She faced inequality due to her race and gender throughout her life and used her pen to express her outrage and advocate for solutions.

Charlotte Louise Bridges Forten was born August 17, 1837 in Philadelphia to Robert Bridges Forten and Mary Virginia Wood. Her grandparents, James, Sr. and Charlotte Forten, hosted leading Black and white abolitionists into their home on a regular basis. James Forten was one of the wealthiest Blacks in Philadelphia, having amassed a fortune in the sail making business. Her parents, Robert Bridges Forten and Mary Woods Forten, continued the family’s activist tradition as had her uncles and aunts, including Sarah, Harriet, and Margaretta Forten, who helped establish the bi-racial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Charlotte’s mother died when she was three. Through abolitionist and family connections, she was sent to live with the Remond family of Salem, Massachusetts in 1853 to finish her formal education. Schools in Salem were integrated, unlike in Philadelphia where education was segregated. Charlotte pursued her education at Higginson Grammar School for Girls and on graduating enrolled in Salem Normal School (now Salem State University). A prolific and talented writer, she wrote poems and essays while still a student, publishing some in Garrison’s Liberator and in the Salem Register and was mentored by John Greenleaf Whittier. Like many educated women of her generation, Charlotte became a teacher. Her first teaching position was at Eppes Grammar School in Salem, where she became the first African American teacher in a Salem public school. A bout with tuberculosis led her to return to her family in Philadelphia two years later. She threw herself into writing poetry and many of her activist-themed poems were published in magazines such as The Liberator.

During the American Civil War, Forten joined the mission to the South Carolina Sea Islands known as the Port Royal Experiment. Forten was the first African American to teach at the Penn School (now the Penn Center) on St. Helena's Island, South Carolina. The Union forces divided the land, giving freedmen families plots to work independently. Forten worked with many freedmen and their children on St. Helena Island, teaching them to read. During this time, she resided at Seaside Plantation. She chronicled this time in her essays, entitled "Life on the Sea Islands," which were published in Atlantic Monthly in the May and June issues of 1864.

Forten left St. Helena in 1864 in ill health. During Reconstruction, she served as Secretary of the Teachers Committee of the New England Freedmen’s Union Commission and in 1871-72 she returned to South Carolina to teach at Charleston’s Robert Gould Shaw Memorial School.

In 1872, Forten moved to Washington, D.C. to teach at the Preparatory High School for Negro Youth. She left that post soon after for one with the U.S. Treasury. She later married Francis James Grimké, 13 years her junior. Born a slave, Grimké, was the half-brother of prominent white abolitionist sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimké. After gaining his freedom once the war ended, Francis entered the Princeton Theological Seminary, graduating in 1878 and becoming ordained. Charlotte and Francis Grimké had one daughter who died in infancy.

Charlotte became more involved in missionary activities. They moved to Washington, D.C., where he served as pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. She died in July 1914 in Washington, D.C. Her home in Washington is on the national register of historic places. Salem State University dedicated the Charlotte Forten Legacy Room to her story.

Sources:

Salem State University https://www.salemstate.edu/charlotte-forten

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Forten_Grimk%C3%A9

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