So-journer Truth, 1797? - 1883
Sojourner Truth was a slave who fled from the household in New York State where she worked in 1827 and found refuge with a Quaker family who helped her to find and free two of her children who had been sold into slavery.
She moved to New York City in 1829, (slavery having been abolished there in 1828) and found work as a domestic and became active in religious movements. After 'voices' told her to take the name of Sojourner Truth, (1843) she became a preacher against the evils of slavery, drawing big crowds in Ohio, Indiana, Missouri and Kansas. Most were thrilled by the force and simplicity of her message of Christian love and tolerance. She found her way to a Utopian community in Northampton Massachusetts where she was exposed to liberal ideas such as abolitionism.
Abolitionist leader William Garrison (Eliza Wigham was one of his followers) persuaded her to dictate her life story, which became a powerful weapon in the abolitionist cause.
By 1850 Sojourner had made the connection between the deprivation of rights of the slave and those of women and she began lecturing at women’s suffrage meetings. Her message was simple – if you want rights, just take them.
Speech below demands that definitions of female gender allow for women’s strength as well as their suffering attendant upon poverty and enslavement.
Many men not receptive to the mixing of these two issues. Others were just resentful of a black woman being able to speak so eloquently on these issues.
After the war she worked on behalf of black soldiers and freed slaves whose children were being kidnapped and being sent to slave states. President Lincoln received her at the White house (1864). After the war she worked for the Freedmans Relief association leading an unsuccessful petition drive to secure land grants for the resettlement of African Americans in the west. In 1879 a number of black southerners migrated to Kansas spontaneously, which she applauded.
"A'n't I a woman"
She delivered this speech at the State Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 28th May, 1851.
Wall, childern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be somethin' out o' kilter. I tink dat 'twixt de niggers of de Souf and de womin at de Norf, all talkin' 'bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all dis her talkin' 'bout?
Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place. And a'n'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 a'n't I a woman? I could work as much and cat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear de lash as well! And a'n't I a woman? I have borne thirteen childern, and see 'em mos' all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And a'n't 1 a woman?
Den dey talks 'bout dis ting in de head; what dis dey call it? (Intellect, whispered someone near.) Dat's it, honey. What's dat go to do wid womin's right o nigger's rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let mehave my little half measure full?
Den dat little man in black dar, he say, women can't have as much rights as man, 'cause Christ wan't a woman. Whar did your Christ come from? Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to do wid him.
If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese women togedder ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now dey is asking to do it, de men better let 'em. (Long continued cheering)
Bleeged to ye for hearin on me and now old Sojoumer han't got nothin' more to say. (Roars of applause.)
Source: Brian MacArthur, Historic Speeches (Penguin, 1995, N.Y.) pp. 433-434, 436-437