Francis J. Grimke was born in 1850 in Charleston, South Carolina. He was the middle son of slaveholder Henry Grimke and an enslaved woman.

After the Civil War, both Francis and Archibald entered freedman schools. Local abolitionists were impressed with the young boys’ intellect and helped to provide for their education. Archibald and Francis soon captured the attention of their fierce abolitionist aunts, Angelina Weld Grimke, and Sara Grimke. Angelina and Sarah would step in to provide for the young men, eventually helping Francis through Princeton Theological Seminary.

Francis had a full ministry as both pastor and activist. He pastored DC’s Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, a prestigious body of upper-class black believers in the nation’s capital.

Francis shepherded his flock through the flu epidemic of 1918, and the epidemic of lynchings in the South, writing sermons about both. He devoted his life to teaching orthodox Christian truths and living them out in the racially hostile landscape of his day.

By the time he died in 1937, he had left years of faithful service in his wake.