Archibald Grimke, “The Shame of America, or the Negro’s Case Against the Republic”

Archibald Grimke was born enslaved in Charleston, South Carolina in 1849. After the Civil War, Archibald and his younger brother Francis, enrolled at Lincoln University. Archibald graduated in 1872 and then entered Harvard Law School. After graduation he practiced in Boston. By the 1880s Grimke became involved in a number of issues such as temperance and women’s rights and developed a reputation as a public speaker. By 1898 he became a member of the American Negro Academy, an organization of black intellectuals, and served as its president from 1903 to 1919. Grimke was also a founding member of both the Niagara Movement and the NAACP. In a speech given at various locations in 1920, seventy-one year-old Archibald Grimke eloquently expounds on the long history of American racism.