Area less than one acre Architect Unknown NRHP Reference # 76002129 Added to NRHP 11 May 1976 | Built 1881 Architectural style Other Opened 1881 | |
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Location 1608 R St., NW., Washington, D.C. Similar Toutorsky Mansion, House of the Temple, Folger Shakespeare Library, Arena Stage, Ford House Office Bui | ||
The Charlotte Forten Grimké House is a historic home in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Northwest Washington, D.C., United States. From 1881 to 1886, the house was owned by Charlotte Forten Grimké (1837–1914), an abolitionist and educator, one of the first Northerners to enter Union-controlled areas of the South during the American Civil War in order to teach freedmen and their children.
Grimké was the first African American to teach former slaves in the South, at the South Carolina Sea Islands. Following the Civil War, she was known as a supporter of women's rights, including suffrage; and as a teacher and writer. In 1894 she was co-founder of the Colored Women's League.
She published poetry expressing her activism before the war. Her journals, reprinted in the 1980s, are significant as works by a free black woman in the antebellum North. The house, located at 1608 R Street NW, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.