But I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality.
All I ask of our brethren, is that
they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to
stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy. If
he has not given us the rights which have, as I conceive, been
wrested from us, we shall soon give evidence of our inferiority,
and shrink back into that obscurity, which the high souled
magnanimity of man has assigned us as our appropriate sphere.
-- Sarah Grimke. "Letter II" 1987. Letters on
the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman. Addressed to Mary
S. Parker, President of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society.
Boston: Knapp, 1838. p.10.