SOJOURNER TRUTH & HER 'AIN'T I A WOMAN?' SPEECH

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Sojourner Truth, American abolitionist and activist for African-American civil and women rights, who delivered her famous Ain't I a Woman? speech at the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio on a day like today in 1851.

Sojourner Truth (born Isabella Baumfree; c. 1797-November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist and activist for African-American civil rights, women's rights, and alcohol temperance.

Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man.

She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God had called her to leave the city and go into the countryside testifying to the hope that was in her. Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title Ain't I a Woman?, a variation of the original speech that was published in 1863 as being spoken in a stereotypical Black dialect, then more commonly spoken in the South. Sojourner Truth, however, grew up speaking Dutch as her first language.

During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for formerly enslaved people (summarized as the promise of forty acres and a mule). She continued to fight on behalf of women and African Americans until her death. As her biographer Nell Irvin Painter wrote, At a time when most Americans thought of slaves as male and women as white, Truth embodied a fact that still bears repeating: Among the blacks are women; among the women, there are blacks.

A memorial bust of Truth was unveiled in 2009 in Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. She is the first African American woman to have a statue in the Capitol building. 

In 2014, Truth was included in Smithsonian magazine's list of the 100 Most Significant Americans of All Time.

More information: The Sojourner Truth Project

Ain't I a Woman? is a speech, generally considered to have been delivered extemporaneously, by Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), born into slavery in the state of New York. Some time after gaining her freedom in 1827, she became a well known anti-slavery speaker. Her speech was delivered at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, and did not originally have a title.

The speech was briefly reported in two contemporary newspapers, and a transcript of the speech was published in the Anti-Slavery Bugle on June 21, 1851. It received wider publicity in 1863 during the American Civil War when Frances Dana Barker Gage published a different version, one which became known as Ain't I a Woman?, because of its oft-repeated question. This later, better known and more widely available version was the one commonly referenced in popular culture and, until historian Nell Irvin Painter's 1996 biography of Truth, by historians as well.

Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree, in 1797 in Ulster County, New York. Truth ran from her master in 1827 after he went back on his promise of her freedom. She became a preacher and an activist throughout the 1840s–1850s.

She delivered her speech, Ain't I a Woman?, at the Women's Rights Convention in 1851. Truth questions the treatment of white women compared to black women. Seemingly pointing out a man in the room, Truth says, That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere.

In the Gage version, she exclaims that no one ever does any of these things for her, repeating the question, And ain't I a woman? several times. She says that she has worked and birthed many children, making her as much a woman as anyone else. Despite giving birth to children just like white women did, black women were not treated with the same respect as white women. Black women were women, but because their race was seen as inferior, being a woman did not mean much if they were not white. 

There is no official published version of her speech; many rewritings of it were published anywhere from one month to 12 years after it was spoken.

More information: Learning for Justice

 There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights,
but not a word about the colored women;
and if colored men get their rights,
and not colored women theirs, you see,
the colored men will be masters over the women,
 and it will be just as bad as it was before.

Sojourner Truth