The Grimke sisters Sara and Angelina were from born in the southern state of South Carolina in the United Sates in 1782 and 1805, respectively. In that time the Southern states of the United States had black people as slaves, and the sisters were not in favor of it. The two sisters were very religious and eventually became Quakers and started to speak up against slavery and to support the abolition movement that looked to free the slaves. This support of the abolition cause caused them to be disliked in their native state and even some problems with members of the Quaker community. The sisters supported by the American Anti Slavery society started to speak to other women in gatherings and giving conferences in favor of the slave cause, which were eventually attended by both men and women. This made The General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts angry and they sent out a pastoral notice strongly denouncing women preachers and reformers in 1837. For this reason the sisters felt the need to begin to fight for equal rights for women. The action against women and the intention to limit and restrict their rights by these religious leaders was on what the sisters based their argument for women's equal rights.The sisters continued to give lectures on women's rights and were very popular in the north of the country. One of the sister's, Angelina, married an abolitionist man and all of them eventually moved to Boston in the northern state of Massachusetts were they lived for the rest of their lives.
Germany's economy was in a sad state of affairs after the war and now having to pay reparations that were astronomical (approximately $35 billion) the economy was in a very vulnerable state, the whole country was and it was searching for its savior.
Openness of speech and expression was the underlying basis of the "glasnost" policy initiated in 1985 by Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR.
"Glasnost" is the Russian word for openness. It meant a relaxing of government control of the media in the Soviet Union, as well as allowing individuals to express themselves more freely. Even religious groups were given more room to operate than previously had been the case within the communist state system.
