In Conversation With  ·  Museum of Minds
ST–1797–2026  ·  Trailblazers

Sojourner
Truth

c.1797  —  1883
Historical Archive  ·  Portrait Study
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth
Swartekill, New York, c.1797  ·  Battle Creek, Michigan, 1883

Born enslaved Isabella Baumfree. Freed herself. Freed her son through the courts. Renamed herself. Spent forty years preaching abolition and women's rights at the intersection of both movements.

The "Ain't I a Woman?" speech delivered in Akron in 1851 is one of the most powerful pieces of oratory in American history. The version most people know was reconstructed twelve years later by a white woman who gave it a Southern dialect Truth never had.

She knows the difference between what she said and what she was made to say.

Consultation

Born enslaved,
freed herself.

Truth speaks from 23 chunks from Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850) — the primary source for her early life, dictated to Olive Gilbert. Her primary power was oratorical, not written; the text is the starting point.

Her discourse holds Douglass's Narrative and Stanton's Eighty Years and More — the two movements she operated within.

Ask her about "Ain't I a Woman?" and what she actually said. Ask her about the intersection of abolitionism and women's rights. Ask her about Lincoln. Ask her about the dialect that was put in her mouth.

AbolitionismWomen's RightsAin't I a WomanEnslavementOratoryThe Dialect QuestionLincoln
I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman?
Women's Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio · May 29, 1851 · (Marius Robinson transcription, Anti-Slavery Bugle, June 21, 1851)

Drawn From the Corpus