Truth Seeker, Part 2

She was born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree. She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843. How old was she when she adopted her new name. Her name means ‘truth-seeker’. Sojourner was best known for her speech entitled, “Ain’t I a woman?” that she delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

In 1806, at the age of nine, she was sold by her original owner to another man named John Neely for $100, along with a flock of sheep! She would be sold two other times over the next four years of her life. Both times she was sold for less than $200 dollars. At this time in her life, she only spoke Dutch, the language of her first owner, Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh.
Isabella became a free woman when she ran away from her owner to work for another family in New York state. New York had an emancipation law that made slavery illegal in 1826.

By 1844, she had changed her name to Sojourner Truth and traveled across the country speaking about abolition, the movement to end legal slavery. Slavery did not become illegal in all states until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed on December 18th, 1865. Sojourner Truth was an outspoken critic of slavery for 21 years before all slaves were legally free in this country! Truth started dictating her memoirs to her friend Olive Gilbert, and in 1850 William Lloyd Garrison privately published her book, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. That same year, she purchased a home in Northampton, Massachusetts for $300. This was remarkable, being that she could own property as a single black woman 15 years before the abolition of slavery in this country.

Truth Be Told, Sojourner - that is.

Her speech: Ain’t I A Woman?

"Wall, chilern, 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 here talkin' 'bout?

Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober 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 raising herself to her full height, and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked. 'And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! (and she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her tremendous muscular power). 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 de lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos' 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?

"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 got to do wid womin's rights or 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 me have my little half-measure full?" And she pointed her significant finger, and sent a keen glance at the minister who had made the argument. The cheering was long and loud.

"Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wan't a woman! Whar did your Christ come from?" Rolling thunder couldn't have stilled that crowd, as did those deep, wonderful tones, as she stood there with out-stretched arms and eyes of fire. Raising her voice still louder, she repeated, "Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to do wid Him."

Oh, what a rebuke that was to that little man. Turning again to another objector, she took up the defense of Mother Eve. I can not follow her through it all. It was pointed, and witty, and solemn; eliciting at almost every sentence deafening applause; and she ended by asserting:

"If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese women togedder (and she glanced her eye over the platform) 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 greeted this. "'Bleeged to ye for hearin' on me, and now ole Sojourner han't got nothin' more to say."


-the Frances Gage recording, circa 1851