Saturday, May 13, 2023

The wedding cake ordered by Angelina Grimke and Theodore Dwight Weld for their wedding in May 1838

In "The Remarkable Grimkes", his review of Kerri K. Greenidge's "The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family" in the 9 March 2023 issue of "The New York Review of Books", David S. Reynolds includes a detail about the 1838 wedding of abolitionists Angelina Grimke (1805-1879) and Theodore Dwight Weld (1805-1895): "The wedding cake was made by African American bakers and contained no sugar produced by enslaved labor. The couple’s clothing was purchased from local Black businesses, and the invitations were designed by a Black engraver." Even in 1838, activists like Weld and Grimke (the daughter of enslavers in South Carolina) used their economic choices to make political points. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 13 May 2023)

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