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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman" is one of the greatest speeches in American rhetoric
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/2/1/18206645/celebrating-sojourner-truth-google-doodle-aint-i-a-womanSojourner Truths Aint I a Woman is one of the greatest speeches in American rhetoric
Start Black History Month by giving it a read.
By Constance Grady@constancegrady Updated Feb 1, 2019, 4:55pm EST
Google is kicking off Black History Month this year by celebrating the legacy of Sojourner Truth, the subject of todays Google Doodle. Which means that its time to reread one of the great works of American rhetoric: Truths Aint I a Woman speech.
Sojourner Truth was born into slavery at the end of the 18th century, but she escaped carrying her infant daughter with her in 1826. (I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right, she would later say.) When the son she left behind was sold illegally, she successfully sued for his freedom as well. Naming herself Sojourner Truth, she converted to Methodism and began campaigning for womens rights and the abolition of slavery.
She improvised her Aint I a Woman speech in 1851 at the Ohio Womens Rights Convention in Akron. The exact wording of the speech has been contested. In contemporary transcriptions, the famous question aint I a woman? doesnt appear anywhere, and some historians have argued that native New Yorker Truth is unlikely to have spoken in the Southern-inflected English that tinges the most widely reproduced version of the speech.
But regardless of Truths precise wording, the message at the core of Aint I a Woman rings powerfully true 168 years later: that women can change the world, and that Truths blackness did not make her not a woman. Thats the kind of intersectionality that Truth was immensely skilled at navigating, despite the enormous pressure on women of color at the time to choose between the womens movement and the abolitionist movement. Truth never chose. As she pointed out in her speech, she shouldnt have to.
Heres the speech in full:
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 aint 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 aint 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 aint I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mothers grief, none but Jesus heard me! And aint I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; whats this they call it? [member of audience whispers, intellect] Thats it, honey. Whats that got to do with womens rights or negroes rights? If my cup wont hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldnt you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women cant have as much rights as men, cause Christ wasnt 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 aint got nothing more to say.
cilla4progress
(24,799 posts)very moved in high school..
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,515 posts)The Sojourner Truth Project compares the speech many of us were taught -- full of aw-shucks minstrel language, and written by a white woman years after the speech was actually given -- with an account written not soon after the speech. I was staggered at how different it was, and how little I really knew about Sojourner Truth, and how the stereotypical language influenced what I thought about her for so many years.
https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches/
In addition, they provide a video of what the speech may have sounded like, delivered in Sojourner Truth's accent, which was Dutch, because Dutch was her first language. She wouldn't have sounded like a character out of Gone With the Wind.
marble falls
(57,494 posts)WhiskeyGrinder
(22,515 posts)because of the stereotypical language used in the speech. I think this comparison is so important for people to hear about.
marble falls
(57,494 posts)still resonates for you and me over 150 years later.