“Ain’t I a Woman?”

THE LITERARY WORK

A speech presented at the Akron, Ohio. Women’s Rights Convention in 1851.

SYNOPSIS

In a passionately delivered speech, Sojourner Truth proclaims that all women deserve equality.

Events in History at the Time of the Speech

Sojourner Truth was born in New York’s Ulster County around 1797. Owned by several different families of New York, she was finally set free in 1827 after thirty years in slavery. Although she never learned to read or write, her personal magnetism and imposing presence made Truth a powerful champion of abolition and women’s rights. Sojourner Truth staunchly believed that both slaves and women faced similar injustice and inequality. She devoted most of her adult years to speaking publicly about the wrongs of oppression and slavery in any form. Truth delivered her most famous speech on the issue at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in May 1851.

Events in History at the Time of the Speech

Slavery

From 1820 to 1860 cotton production in the South soared to its highest level. The South relied heavily on slave labor to plant and harvest its cotton crops. By the mid-1800s, one out of every five Southern families owned slaves. Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution, which spread throughout New England at this time, created factories that became the mainstay of the Northern economy. In contrast with the businesses of the South, which relied on black slaves, these factories depended mostly on white workers to succeed. The distinctions between North and South grew increasingly more pronounced.

Some slave owners were relatively gentle and understanding. Others, though, treated their slaves with brutality and abuse. Hardly any laws existed to protect slaves, and the few that existed were seldom enforced. A slave, for example, could not hit a white person, even in self-defense. Conversely, the murder of a black slave by a white person was rarely considered a crime. The law regarded the rape of female slaves as criminal only because the act generally involved the trespassing of an outsider onto the slaveowner’s property.

Abolition of slavery

Years before the appearance of militant abolitionists in the 1800s, convincing arguments against slavery had been developed. As early as the 1600s, America faced strong opposition to slave ownership from Quakers and other humanitarians.

During the 1780s several Northern states abolished slavery altogether. In 1808 Congress prohibited importing new slaves to the country, and the Missouri Compromise of 1820 forbade the creation of new slave states in the U.S. territories north of a certain geographical line. New York, Sojourner Truth’s home state, passed a law that the last of its slaves would become free on July 4,1827. Despite many other attempts to outlaw the practice, however, slavery remained legal in the Southern states well into the 1800s. The longer slavery continued, the more the issue provoked tension between North and South.

The mid-1800s saw a growing interest in social and political reform in general, the aim being to improve the lot of humanity and create a more perfect society. Better public schools, cleaner jails, temperance (a movement against selling or drinking alcohol), and women’s rights were among the important causes of the era. A religious surge known as the Second Great Awakening swept across the nation. In other parts of the world, countries such as England (1834) and France (1848) ended the practice of colonial slavery.

Humanitarian reforms, combined with the religious revival, produced a strong antislavery movement around this time in American history. In 1833 followers of William Lloyd Garrison, a well-known abolitionist, joined forces with other like-minded groups to form the American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison quickly became the abolition movement’s most outspoken member. In the first edition of his newspaper, The Liberator, Garrison wrote, “I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject … I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD” (Garrison in Franklin, p. 182). While objections to slavery were not new, Garrison’s fiery words drew more attention to these issues. He adamantly refused to accept the idea of allowing it to continue for another minute.

As feelings about slavery grew stronger, violent uprisings became more frequent. Abolitionist tactics were often ugly, and Southerners responded with similar harshness. Finally, the ideological gap between the North and South regarding slavery and other issues reached the breaking point. The Civil War between North and South erupted in 1861.

Sojourner Truth, like other peaceful abolitionists, had long opposed violence in any form. By the time of the Civil War, however, Truth and several of her pacifist compatriots had experienced a change of heart. Militant abolitionists showed an increasing willingness to throw off the yoke of the white master by means of force if necessary. Truth reportedly said that if she was “ten years younger, I would fly to the battle-field … and if it came to the pinch, put in a blow, now and then” (Truth in Mabee, p. 91).

Women’s role in the abolition movement

Women served vital functions in the abolition movement during the 1800s. They raised money, educated black children, and lectured on the wrongs of slavery. Despite their tireless work, though, women were excluded from taking active, decision-making roles in the antislavery movement. One stark example of this exclusion occurred at the 1840 international abolition convention. Abolitionists from around the globe convened in London for the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. Eight women delegates from America were refused seats on the floor merely on the ground that they were women. The entire first day of the convention was spent discussing whether women ought to be admitted as delegates. Some men argued that admitting women would lower the dignity of the convention. Others said that women were constitutionally unfit for public meetings. Nearly all of the men voted against admitting women delegates. In the end, the women were seated in the balcony while the male delegates proceeded to discuss the wrongs of slavery on the floor below.

The irony and injustice of their treatment at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention did not escape these women. Triggered in part by the mistreatment they endured at the London convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others went on to found the first American women’s rights movement.

The fight for women’s rights

Rights and opportunities were extremely limited for all women during the 1800s. In white society it was generally expected that women would marry, have children, and obey their husbands. The women found themselves barred from almost all professions except teaching; they earned far lower wages than men, and when women earned any money at all, their husbands were fully entitled to keep their earnings. White women suffered other inequalities, too. They could not own property, they were strongly discouraged from speaking in public, and, in the case of divorce, women could not be guardians of their own children. Like criminals, young people, and the insane, women were not allowed to vote. These rules reinforced the role that society felt white women should play, a role deemed proper for members of the so-called “cult of true womanhood.” Meanwhile, society dismissed black women altogether, seeing them as having no place in this cult.

SOJOURNER TRUTH RIDES THE STREETCARS

In Washington, D.C., in 1865, many horse-car operators discriminated against black patrons. Ninety years before Rosa Parks’s famous refusal to relinquish her bus seat to a white man (in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955). Sojourner Truth valiantly insisted upon riding the streetcars whenever and wherever she pleased, and demanded an end to segregated public transportation.

The Seneca Falls Convention, held in July 1848, marked the official beginning of the women’s rights movement, and it included mostly white women. Its official start came when three hundred concerned women and men gathered in upstate New York to discuss the wrongs faced by women. Using the language of the United States Declaration of Independence, they drafted a Declaration of Sentiments that listed the grievances and demands of women. The Seneca Falls Declaration stated “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.” Signers of the Declaration condemned the nation for requiring women to obey its laws but denying them the right to have a voice in the creation of those laws. In their view, the existing laws and practices in the realms of marriage, property, and education hindered a white woman’s ability to pursue “life, liberty and happiness” (Declaration of Sentiments).

Included in the Declaration of Sentiments was the demand for women’s suffrage, or the right to vote. Not all delegates present at Seneca Falls supported the right for women to vote. Several people abstained from signing the Declaration because they felt the right to vote was far too radical a demand.

The problems articulated at Seneca Falls were by no means solved during the convention. Participants hoped that subsequent meetings would take place across the country to continue the struggle for women’s rights. In 1851 women’s rights activists convened again in Akron, Ohio, to further discuss conditions for women in America. A clergyman began to speak, proclaiming that women should not be allowed to vote because they were helpless and weak. Sojourner Truth then took the podium to give her famous speech, becoming one of the few black women to be heard in this mostly white women’s movement.

Sojourner Truth’s speech at the Akron Women’s Rights Convention in 1851 would not only answer the clergyman who spoke before her but would also link antislavery with feminist causes. As a result of Truth’s speech, the issues of race and women’s rights became firmly united, hinging on a common idea—that oppression of any individual was wrong. Some of the women’s rights activists strongly disagreed with this strategy. Jane Swisshelm, a leader at Akron, had criticized Truth for bringing up the issue of race at an earlier women’s rights meeting. “The convention,” complained Swisshelm, “was not called to discuss the rights of color; and we think it altogether irrelevant and unwise to introduce the question” (Swisshelm in Painter, p. 123). Nevertheless Truth would continue to link the two issues at Akron and in subsequent years.

When the Civil War broke out, the women’s rights movement slowed to a virtual stop for a period. Responding to the pressing need for supplies and other forms of aid on and off the battlefield, women turned their attention to the most immediate issues: abolishing slavery and helping the nation get through a violent war.

Black literacy in the nineteenth century

During the time when Sojourner Truth was a slave, most blacks in her home state of New York were illiterate. Literacy rates among blacks elsewhere in the nation were equally low. In the early 1800s, however, New York State planned to abolish slavery in gradual steps. Reasoning that slaves would be more capable of caring for themselves if they learned Christian values, New York passed a law in 1810 that directed slave owners to teach slave children on their property to read the scriptures.

By 1850 approximately 50 percent of black New Yorkers could read, but many blacks across the country remained illiterate. Sojourner Truth, though an intelligent woman, never learned to read or write herself. Instead, she relied upon friends to maintain her correspondence and record her autobiography. “I don’t read such small stuff as letters,” stated Truth, “I read men and nations” (Truth in Mabee, p. 66).

Religious connections to abolition and suffrage

Political speakers of the day, many of whom had their roots in various religious movements, often justified their arguments based on the authority of God. Quakers, a sect of Christians with a long tradition of speaking when the “spirit” moved them, supported through words and deeds the women’s suffrage and antislavery drives.

In the 1830s Sojourner Truth became a wandering evangelist and religious mystic. For several years, she traveled from state to state speaking about her spiritual beliefs. For a time, Truth lived in various spiritual communities along the eastern seaboard. Since religious movements of the period emphasized preaching one’s message as directed by God, they probably affected Sojourner Truth’s speaking style. Certainly they help explain her frequent references to God to bolster her arguments. She heard voices she believed came from God, and felt that God had directed her to travel across the land, showing people their sins.

The belief that God was on their side most likely contributed to the willingness of abolition and women’s rights activists to persevere in their struggle for equality. They did so in the face of open hostility from many who dismissed their message and believed that women should not speak in public. At the Akron convention, Sojourner Truth responded to hecklers in the audience who argued that God had made women naturally inferior to men. Reports indicated that several men argued that men were superior because Christ was a man and because Eve, a woman, caused the expulsion of humankind from Paradise. Sojourner Truth calmly rose to her feet and addressed the harassers: “Whar did your Christ come from?” asked Truth, then answered her own question. Christ was born “from God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him.” In defense of Eve, Truth retorted, “If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down, all ’lone, dese [women] togedder ought to be able to turn it back and get it right side up again” (Truth et al., Narrative of Sojourner Truth, p. 135).

THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

The temperance movement, which called on Americans to abstain from drinking or selling liquor, flourished during the mid-1800s, drawing much of its strength from the women’s movement. Women who fought for temperance did so in part for religious reasons, but also because they had no legal recourse against husbands who might become abusive or indebted as a result of a drunken spree.

Opposition to progressive women

Nineteenthcentury women faced strong pressure to remain silent. Yet Sojourner Truth and other progressive women of her day courageously spoke out about their beliefs on abolition and women’s rights. Standing alone at a public podium meant, for these women, risking ridicule, humiliation, and even assault. It was not uncommon for unsympathetic listeners to hurl rotten eggs or vegetables at the speaker. For example, Lucy Stone, a nineteenth-century women’s rights activist, sustained a head injury from a prayer book thrown at her by a man in the audience during a speaking engagement. Another time, Stone was victimized when a hose of icy water was turned upon her by members of the audience during a speech she made in the dead of winter. Newspapers described women speakers as brazen female fanatics and foreign incendiaries. Many members of the clergy denounced women speakers as well, quoting the Bible to justify their insults. But Sojourner Truth, a striking and gaunt woman who stood nearly six feet tall, spoke out about women’s suffering and their strengths with such spellbinding force that her voice silenced even the boldest hecklers. She seemed, moreover, to be addressing white women as well as men, insisting that the black woman be acknowledged as deserving of the same rights and respect as the white. One can visualize the insistent question, “Ain’t I a Woman?” being directed not only at men in the audience but at her white coworkers in the women’s movement.

The Speech in Focus

The contents

In what was to become her most renowned speech, Sojourner Truth argued that women deserved the same rights as men. If women were as strong as men and could carry an equal workload, she asked, then why shouldn’t women have the rights they so deserve? Pushing up her sleeve to bare her strong and sinewy arm, Truth said, “I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal.... I am as strong as any man” (Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?,” Anti-Slavery Bugle, p. 160).

CONTENDING RENDITIONS OF SOJOURNER TRUTH’S KEY PHRASES

Gage: “Den dey talks ’bout dis ting in de head. What dis dey call it?” “Intellect,” whispered some one near. “Dat’s it, honey. What’s dat got to do with woman’s rights or niggers’ rights?”

Anti-Slavery Bugle: “As for intellect, all I can say is … [y]ou need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much.”

Gage: “I tink dat ’twixt de niggers of de Souf and de women at de Norf all a talkin ’bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon.”

Anti-Slavery Bugle: “But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.”

(Stetson, pp. 116, 118)

Truth observed in her speech that men seemed to hold on dearly to their power over women. She contended, though, that men had nothing to fear by giving women their rights. “The poor men seem to be all in confusion and don’t know what to do. Why children,” Truth said, addressing the men in the audience, “if you have women’s rights give it to her and you will feel better” (“Ain’t I a Woman?,” Anti-Slavery Bugle, p. 160). Women were not asking for more than what was rightfully theirs, claimed Truth. In fact, they were asking only for their fair share of liberty. If women have a pint of intellect and men have a quart, Truth questioned, then why can she not merely “have her little pint full?” (“Ain’t I a Woman?,” Anti-Slavery Bugle, p. 160).

According to one commonly accepted version of the famous speech, Sojourner Truth asked why a black woman should not be treated like any other woman. Truth turned towards a previous speaker and said, “Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to have de best place every whar. Nobody eber help me into carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best place, and ar’n’t I a woman?” (“Ain’t I a Woman?,” Narrative of Sojourner Truth, p. 134).

The controversy over the speech

Because Sojourner Truth was never taught how to read or write, what is known about her life and her famous speech is available to us only through newspaper reports and accounts written by Truth’s friends. There is considerable controversy over the factual accuracy of this information.

There exist at least two known versions of Truth’s Akron address. The most widely accepted rendering comes from Frances Gage’s report in The Anti-Slavery Standard of May 2, 1863. Gage’s 1863 version of Truth’s speech was incorporated into two important historical sources: Sojourner Truth’s Narrative and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s History of Woman Suffrage. An alternative version of the speech was published in an 1851 issue of the abolition newspaper, The Anti-Slavery Bugle, published in Salem, Ohio. While both Gage and the newspaper convey similar messages about Truth’s speech, the two renditions are different enough to raise significant questions about the accuracy of either account.

Gage wrote down Truth’s speech twelve years after it was given, a length of time that gave rise to plausible concerns about whether Gage was able to recall precisely the words spoken by Sojourner Truth. In Gage’s version of the speech, Truth reportedly repeated the phrase “Ain’t I a Woman?” four times. This cadence and type of speech pattern is inconsistent with reports of Truth’s numerous other speeches, but is highly consistent with Gage’s own poetry and other writings. None of the four existing newspaper reports concerning the speech from 1851 mention Truth’s use of the famous phrase. If Truth had in fact recited the haunting phrase “Ain’t I a Woman?” four times, as Gage reports, it seems unlikely that newspapers would neglect this fact.

Because Truth could not read, she was unable to check the accuracy of any written versions of her speech. Even if Truth was aware of any factual discrepancies, it is possible that she did not want to point out errors in Frances Gage’s work and risk offending her, since Gage was a dear friend. On the other hand, it is questionable whether Truth spoke using the white dialect recorded in the Anti-Slavery Bugle.

To a large degree, Gage’s rendition of Truth’s speech has gone unquestioned. In any case, there is evidence that Sojourner Truth did not mind the folklore created about her speech and her life. “Her focus in telling the story of her life was not on factual truth about her life, but on the moral truth that could be learned from it.... Truth often seemed willing to let friendly myths develop about her, myths that might make her a more fascinating advocate of the causes she supported” (Mabee, p. 68). Later generations can be reasonably sure, however, that recorded accounts of key ideas in Truth’s speech captured the spirit, if not the letter, of her words.

Sources

Sojourner Truth brought with her to the Akron Women’s Rights Convention the power of her personal experience as both a woman and a freed black slave. Truth’s physical presence was a strong reminder to her listeners about the oppression black women faced. Sojourner Truth was reportedly raped by a slave master and forced into marriage with her husband. She gave birth to five children while a slave, saw two daughters sold away from her, and had an owner who reneged on a promise to free her. (In response, she had simply left his farm, appealing to a Quaker neighbor who settled the matter so that Truth became free.) Who could better speak out on the issues of slavery and women’s rights than one who had endured such a fate as Sojourner Truth?

How the speech was received

There is some controversy as to how Sojourner Truth’s speech was received. According to Frances Gage, who was the presiding officer at the Akron Convention, white women were wary of Sojourner Truth. White men were far less charitable, booing and hissing as Truth approached the podium. In her report, Gage wrote that many of the leaders at the Akron Convention were “almost thrown into panic” at the sight of Sojourner Truth. They begged Gage not to let Truth speak because it would ruin the women’s movement to have their cause “mixed with abolition and niggers” (Mabee, p. 69). Yet Gage claimed that Truth’s powerful presence and charismatic speaking style were strong enough to calm even the most hostile crowd. According to at least twenty-seven other descriptions of the convention, however, the audience did not respond to Truth in as unruly a fashion as Gage reported.

Regardless of the conflicting descriptions of Sojourner Truth’s reception at the Akron Women’s Rights Convention, it is certain that she exerted a powerful influence on the abolition and women’s rights movements of the nineteenth century. “Ain’t I a Woman?,” the title which later generations assigned to Sojourner Truth’s speech, has survived to become a familiar slogan used by political activists to this day.