Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1880 to a biracial family. Her father, Archibald Grimké, was a lawyer and of mixed race, son of a white slave owner and a mixed-race enslaved woman of color his father owned; he was of the "negro race" according to the society he grew up in. He was the second African American to graduate from Harvard Law School. Her mother, Sarah Stanley, was European American, from a Midwestern middle-class family. Information about her is scarce.