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Sojourner
Truth was a former slave who became a preacher, abolitionist,
and supporter of women's rights. She made her famous speech
"Ain't I a Woman?" (retold later by Frances D. Gage) at
a convention on women's rights in 1851 in Akron, Ohio. According
to Gage, Truth made this speech in response to Protestant
ministers' claims that men deserved greater privileges than
women because of their "superior intellect" and because
God had chosen Jesus Christ to take the form of a man. Truth
may not have spoken in the heavy dialect presented by Gage;
other accounts of the speech are closer to standard English.
Although recent scholarship has questioned the accuracy
of Gage's account, which she wrote 30 years after the convention,
it remains a classic of American literature.
Ain't I A
Woman?
That man over
there say
a woman needs to be helped into carriages
and lifted over ditches
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages
or over mud puddles
or gives me the best place
And ain't I
a woman?
Look at me
Look at my arm!
I have plowed 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 to it--
and bear the lash as well
and ain't I a woman?
I have born 13 children
and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mother's grief
none but Jesus heard me...
and ain't I a woman?
That little man in the back there say
a woman can't have as much rights as a man
cause Christ wasn't a woman
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
together women ought to be able to turn it
rightside up again.
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