Within abolitionist and early feminist history, especially Black feminist history, many recognise a single name: Sojourner Truth. An African American abolitionist as well as civil and women’s rights activist of the nineteenth century, her May 1851 speech, now synonymous with the phrase ‘Ar’n’t I a woman?’ and the modernised ‘Ain’t I a woman?’, is one of the most famous and widely recognised abolitionist and women’s rights speeches in American history.
Sojourner Truth’s life spanned some of the most tumultuous years of American history, from the end of the Revolutionary War to the beginning of Reconstruction. The formative years of her life occurred within the system of slavery in the US and shaped the direction of her subsequent activism and advocacy. Born into slavery in New York as Isabella Baumfree to parents Elizabeth Baumfree (the daughter of enslaved peoples from Guinea) and James Baumfree (an enslaved man from Ghana), Truth’s childhood was categorised by upheaval and abuse, and she was sold under slavery four times (at the approximate ages of four, 11, 12 and 13 years old). She suffered harsh physical labour, punishment and sexual abuse, and whilst enslaved, she had five children: James (who passed away in childhood), Diana (the result of rape by her enslaver), Peter, Elizabeth, and Sophia, who she had with her husband, an enslaved man named Thomas.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the State of New York began the process of enacting laws to abolish slavery, although, the act was one for gradual abolition. As a result, children born to an enslaved mother after July 1799 were declared legally free after a period of indentured servitude. Specifically, they were declared free when male children reached the age of 28 and female children reached the age of 25. Those, such as Truth, who were born prior to July 1799, were redefined as indentured servants and could no longer be bought and sold but were required to continue their unpaid labour. Truth’s enslaver, Dutch-American John Dumont, promised her freedom in July 1826 "if she would do well and be faithful" but this promise was later broken and her freedom revoked.
In late 1826, however, Truth took freedom into her own hands. She escaped with her daughter Sophia, leaving her other children behind. The pair found refuge with the Van Wagenen family in New Paltz, New York and the Van Wagenens bought the pair’s freedom from Dumont when he later came looking for them. The family also aided Truth in suing Dumont, who had sold a then five-year-old Peter into slavery in Alabama after the passage of the anti-slavery law, making the sale illegal. In 1828, Truth filed a lawsuit with the New York Supreme Court for his return and became the first Black woman to successfully sue a white man in the United States.
In 1829, Truth relocated to New York City where she took up domestic work for the following 11 years. She worked for multiple evangelical preachers, including Elijah Pierson. As a child, her mother had spoken to her of God and Truth herself had had ‘talks with God’. Despite these early religious engagements, she is believed to have experienced a ‘spiritual awakening’ whilst living with the Van Wagenen family and at the start of June 1843, she changed her name from Isabella Baumfree to Sojourner Truth, later being quoted to have explained the name change:
"The Lord gave me ‘Sojourner’ because I was to travel up an’ down the land, showin’ the people their sins an’ bein’ a sign unto them. Afterwards, I told the Lord I wanted another name ‘cause everybody else had two names, and the Lord gave me ‘Truth’, because I was to declare the truth to people."
Her new name signalled her calling as a preacher and abolitionist.
Truth had never learned to read or write and her first language was Dutch, a reflection of her prior enslavement. Despite this, she serves as a figure who, through her activism, broke with conventional understandings of intellectuality during the period. Not only did her race and gender starkly contrast with popular understandings of who could be considered an intellectual, but combined with her inability to read or write, she strongly defied stereotypes.
Following her ‘spiritual awakening’ in 1843, Truth travelled throughout the Northeast, preaching at camp meetings and drawing in large crowds when she spoke and sang. A year later, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a utopian abolitionist community in Massachusetts which had been founded two years prior with the aim of forming ‘a better and purer form of society’. The community supported the immediate abolition of slavery, the equality of all genders, races, and religions, citizenship for free Black Americans, as well as pacifism. During her time working and living with the community, Truth met prominent abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. She is believed to have given her first anti-slavery speech the same year that she joined the community.
However, her activism did not only take the form of speeches. Truth utilised song as a means of advocacy. One song performed at an abolitionist convention in the 1840s, called 'I Am Pleading for My People', incorporated the following lyrics:
"I am pleading for my people, a poor downtrodden race Who dwell in freedom’s boasted land with no abiding place I am pleading that my people may have their rights restored, For they have long been toiling, and yet had no reward" And "I am pleading for the mothers who gaze in wild despair Upon the hated auction block, and see their children there."
Through the song, Truth advocated for those who were enslaved in the United States by highlighting the hypocrisy of the US as ‘the land of the free’. Notably, she introduced a gendered dynamic, perhaps drawing on her own experience as a mother within the system of slavery, to emphasise the particular suffering enslaved mothers experienced.
The speech that has become synonymous with Sojourner Truth’s name, however, was delivered in 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, and was one which she gave whilst on a lecture tour of central and western New York. Known as the ‘Ar’n’t I a woman?’ or ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ speech, Sojourner Truth’s speech on women’s rights to the convention has been the subject of controversy in the historical world.
The Sojourner Truth Project reports two principal versions of the speech: one transcribed and published in 1851 by Marius Robinson (who attended the convention) and one written 12 years later by Frances Gage (one of the convention’s organisers). It is Gage’s later version which introduced the now famous ‘and ar’n’t I a woman?’ line, a question which neither Robinson nor any newspaper coverage of the speech in 1851 reported. As well as this inconsistency, Gage’s version has been highlighted by historians for employing distinctly more colloquial language than other records of the speech. Despite these differences, the key points of the speech run parallel in each version:
"I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?" (Robinson’s version)
"-And ar’n’t I a woman? Look at me. Look at my arm. I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man can head me." (Gage’s version)
The importance of Sojourner Truth’s speech to the convention is therefore rooted in the way it highlighted the unique position and struggles of African American women in the nineteenth century.
As well as her abolitionist efforts and campaigning for women’s rights, historians have recently highlighted Truth’s efforts to recruit Black soldiers for the Union Army and obtain food and clothing donations during the Civil War, work which resulted in her meeting with President Lincoln in 1864.
As an intellectual and activist, Sojourner Truth stands out for her early intersectional politics and abolitionist efforts. Her work continues to have contemporary relevance in political affairs; in 2013, when the House passed the Violence Against Women Act after months of debate over its expansion to include protections for Native American women, immigrants, and LGBT+ people, amid the floor debate, Representative Gwen Moore utilised the famous question attributed to Truth, stating: "I would say as Sojourner Truth would say: Ain’t they women? They deserve protections."
Several statues have been erected to commemorate the life and activism of Sojourner Truth, including one in Florence, Massachusetts near the former site of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry. Sojourner Truth also features in the Women's Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park, New York City. Installed in 2020, the sculpture was the first in the park to depict historical women.
Further Reading:
BlackPast, ‘Sojourner Truth (CA. 1797-1883)’, (2007): https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/truth-sojourner-isabella-baumfree-ca-1797-1883/
David, L. and Stetson, E., Glorying in Tribulation: The Life Work of Sojourner Truth (Michigan State University Press, 1994)
The Sojourner Truth Project, ‘Compare the Two Speeches’: https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches/
Truth, S. and Gilbert, O., The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
Zackodnik, T. C., ‘”I Don’t Know How You Will Feel When I Get Through”: Racial Difference, Woman’s Rights, and Sojourner Truth’, Feminist Studies, 30.1 (2004), 49-73
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