"A wish to record the passing events of my life, which, even if quite unimportant to others, naturally posses great interest to myself, and of which it will be pleasant to have some remembrance, has induced me to commence this journal." So opens the first diary of Charlotte L. Forten Grimké, a nineteenth-century teacher, civil rights proponent, poet, and essayist, who is now better known for her private writing in her five extant journals than for her public expressions. Forten's journals, begun in May 1854, when she was sixteen, provide a detailed account of the antebellum life of a relatively privileged woman of color in the North, tracing the author's eventual involvement in the Port Royal Experiment during the Civil War as a teacher of contraband slaves in South Carolina. Drawn as well from this remarkable experience, Forten's most significant publication during her lifetime, " Life in the Sea...