I am currently on a research break between series 12 on last queens and series 13 on shaping the female body. But that makes it a perfect time to bring you words that were not written by me, but by a woman in history.

The woman now famous as Sojourner Truth was born somewhere around 1797 in upstate New York. Slavery was still legal, even in the north, and she was a slave. Her name was Isabella. Her first language was Dutch. Yes, Dutch. I’m not going to give her full life story here because she deserves her own full episode someday. For today, just know that the state of New York enacted gradual emancipation of slaves, and she ended up free (not entirely legally) in 1826. In 1843, she heard the Spirit of God calling her to be an itinerant preacher. From then on, she traveled around, preaching religion, but also abolition and women’s rights, and by all accounts, she was a very effective speaker.

Her most famous speech is known as “Ain’t I a Woman?”, delivered in 1851 in Akron, Ohio. It is a beautiful speech. But there is a historical problem with it. Sojourner was illiterate. She did not write anything down herself, so we only get her words filtered through others. The famous version of this speech was written down twelve years later by a white woman named Frances Dana Gage.

Like every other writer, Gage had purposes of her own. She was a radical feminist and abolitionist. She was a compelling writer herself. Her version of the speech is not entirely in line with the only other report of it we have. That one is by the reporter Marius Robinson, who published a report of the 1851 conference shortly after it happened.

Historians like Robinson’s version because it is closer to the source, and therefore almost certainly more accurate. Pretty much everyone who is not a historian likes Gage’s version better. It’s more dramatic. And among other things, it includes the title line “Ain’t I a Woman?” Robinson’s version doesn’t have that line anywhere.

Gage wrote her version in a somewhat inconsistent dialect that made Sojourner sound like the slaves in South Carolina that Gage herself was surrounded by at the time she wrote her version. Sojourner, remember, was from New York and her first language was Dutch. It is highly unlikely that her dialect was anything like what Gage wrote down.

I consider that a lucky circumstance because there is no way I could deliver that accent convincingly anyway, and now I have a solid historical reason not to even try. I am nonetheless going to give you Gage’s version of the speech. It’s the famous one. And short as it is, it is longer than Robinson’s brief sketch. Besides, the gist of the speech is the same as Robinson’s version. The points and the examples are the same. A few of the little digs in it are the same., so I feel that the ideas truly are Sojourner Truth’s. Gage may have exaggerated how many children Sojourner had, but Sojourner did have children and they were all born as slaves. Gage may have added a reference to Sojourner bearing the lash of a master, but Sojourner had, in fact, been beaten by more than one master, even if she didn’t happen to mention it in this particular speech.

The version I’m giving you then is the creation of two women: mostly Sojourner Truth, a little Frances Dana Gage. Both were abolitionists and feminists. So imagine the scene in 1851, Akron, Ohio, at a Women’s Rights Convention. The women’s rights movement was generally assumed to be made up of white women working for white women’s rights, and it was white women who had organized this conference and spoken so far, sometimes with some heckling from an unsympathetic crowd.

But in the words of Marius Robinson, a white male reporter, “one of the most unique and interesting speeches of the Convention was made by Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave. It is impossible to transfer it to paper, or convey any adequate idea of the effect it produced upon the audience. Those only can appreciate it who saw her powerful form, her whole-souled, earnest gestures, and listened to her strong and truthful tones. She came forward to the platform and … said with great simplicity” (Robinson):

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.

Selected Sources

National Park Service. “Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman?” Nps.gov, 17 Nov. 2017, http://www.nps.gov/articles/sojourner-truth.htm.

Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojourner Truth : A Life, a Symbol. New York, Ny, Norton, [Ca, 2007.

Robinson, Marius. “Anti-Slavery Bugle. [Volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, June 21, 1851, Image 4.” Loc.gov, no. 1851/06/21, 2019, p. 160, chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83035487/1851-06-21/ed-1/seq-4/, info:lccn/sn83035487.

Sojourner Truth Project. “Compare the Speeches.” The Sojourner Truth Project, 2014, http://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches/. Accessed 7 June 2024.