Sojourner Truth Biography: Famous Speaker of “Ain’t I a Woman?”

Truth went on a lecture tour through central and western New York State with abolitionist and speaker George Thompson in 1851. Sojourner Truth gave her well-known impromptu statement on women’s rights, which became known as “Ain’t I a Woman?” during the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in May. In her remarks, she called for all women to have equal human rights. She also talked as a former slave, fusing appeals for women’s rights with abolitionism and using her strength as a worker to support her claims for equal rights.

Both Frances Dana Barker Gage and Hannah Tracy, who were present when Sojourner Truth spoke, planned the gathering. A month later, Rev. Marius Robinson, the owner and editor of the newspaper who was present, published the first of several recorded versions of Truth’s remarks in the Anti-Slavery Bugle. The question “Ain’t I a Woman?” was not mentioned ren Robinson’s account of the speech or in any of the other newspapers that covered it at the time. In May 1863, twelve years later, Gage released an entirely different version. It was very different from the speech Robinson had described, and Truth’s speech pattern seemed to reflect traits of Black slaves in the southern United States.

Because that question was asked four times, Gage’s rendition of the speech—known as “Ain’t I a Woman?”—became the most widely shared version. Given that Truth was born and reared in New York and spoke only upper New York State low-Dutch until she was nine years old, it is quite unlikely that her own speech pattern was like this.

Sojourner Truth stated the following in the version that Rev. Marius Robinson recorded:

I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman’s rights. [sic] I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman have a pint, and a man a quart – why can’t she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, – for we can’t take more than our pint’ll hold. The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don’t know what to do. Why children, if you have woman’s rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won’t be so much trouble. I can’t read, but I can hear. I have heard the Bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept and Lazarus came forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your part? But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.

In contrast to Robinson’s testimony, Sojourner Truth stated in Gage’s 1863 version that her 13 children were sold into slavery. Truth was never known to have further children, and it is generally accepted that she had five, one of which was sold. Gage wrote in 1851 that Akron and the press in particular were generally supportive of the woman’s rights convention, but in 1863 she wrote that the convention leaders were afraid of the “mobbish” opponents. This contradicts Gage’s 1863 memory of the convention. According to several eyewitness accounts of Truth’s address, everyone was “beaming with joyous gladness” during the session, and not “one discordant note” broke the harmony of the proceedings. According to reports from the time, Sojourner Truth was well received by the attendees of the convention, most of whom were ardent abolitionists who supported progressive racial and civil rights ideologies. Truth was received with hisses and voices clamoring to stop her from speaking in Gage’s 1863 rendition. In reality, there had been violent responses to other interracial meetings of white and black abolitionist women, like the burning of Pennsylvania Hall.

Sojourner Truth contended, “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere,” according to Frances Gage’s account from 1863. No one in the greatest place aids me. And am I not a woman? “Ain’t I a Woman” by Truth demonstrated the lack of acknowledgment that black women endured during this period and will persist long after her time. Angela Davis noted, “Black women, of course, were virtually invisible within the protracted campaign for woman suffrage,” bolstering Truth’s claim that no one offers her “any best place”—not just her, but black women in general.

Sojourner Truth addressed scores, if not hundreds, of audiences throughout the course of the following ten years. Working with Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle editor Marius Robinson, Truth gave speeches throughout the state from 1851 to 1853. She met Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1853 while giving a speech at a suffragist “mob convention” at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City. She went to Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1856 to give a speech to the Friends of Human Progress.

African American women in History

Truth devoted her life to advocating for voting rights, property rights, abolition, and a more equitable society for women and African Americans. She led the charge in addressing interconnected social justice issues. “When Black women like Truth spoke of rights, they mixed their ideas with challenges to slavery and to racism,” noted historian Martha Jones. Sojourner Truth shared personal tales that implied a different path for the women’s movement, one that supported the interests of all people.

In 1853, Sojourner Truth, Stephen Symonds Foster, Abby Kelley Foster, Jonathan Walker, Marius Robinson, and Sallie Holley formed the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society in Adrian, Michigan. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, the state society was established in 1836.

Sojourner Truth purchased a nearby site in Northampton in 1856, but she did not stay there for very long. She sold Daniel Ives all of her belongings, both new and old, on September 3, 1857, and relocated to Battle Creek, Michigan, where she reunited with former Millerite movement members who had founded the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Early antislavery efforts had started in Ohio and Michigan. She also joined the Progressive Friends, the core group of Michigan abolitionists, some of whom she had previously met at national conventions. Truth resided in the Spiritualist utopia of Harmonia, Michigan, from 1857 until 1867.

After that, she relocated to the neighboring town of Battle Creek, Michigan, where she lived at 38 College St. until her passing in 1883. Her daughter Elizabeth Banks (age 35) and her grandsons James Caldwell (spelled incorrectly as “Colvin”; age 16) and Sammy Banks (age 8) were living with her in Harmonia, according to the 1860 census.

During the Civil War, Sojourner Truth assisted in enlisting African American males in the Union army. James Caldwell, her grandson, joined the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. In 1864, Truth worked hard to better the lot of African-Americans while working for the National Freedman’s Relief Association in Washington, D.C. President Abraham Lincoln invited her to the White House in October of that year. While employed at Washington’s Freedman’s Hospital in 1865, Truth participated in the streetcars’ forced desegregation.

“The Valiant Soldiers” is a song that Sojourner Truth is credited with writing for the 1st Michigan Colored Regiment. It was reportedly written during the war and performed by her in Detroit and Washington, D.C. “John Brown’s Body” or “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” are the songs to which it is sung. The notion that Truth wrote the verses has been contested (see “Marching Song of the First Arkansas”).

Legacy

In 1935, a stone memorial was erected in Monument Park’s Stone History Tower in Battle Creek, creating the first historical marker honoring Sojourner Truth. Highway M-66 in Calhoun County, which runs from the county line south of Athens to Morgan Road in Pennfield Township, northeast of Battle Creek, was named the Sojourner Truth Memorial Highway by the State of Michigan as an additional tribute to her legacy.

The anticipated bicentennial of Sojourner’s birth occurred in 1999. A life-size sculpture of Sojourner Truth by Tina Allen was installed to Monument Park in Battle Creek to commemorate the event. The bronze statue of Sojourner stands 12 feet tall.

Ohio

On the location of the Universalist “Old Stone” Church in Akron, where Sojourner Truth delivered her “Ain’t I a Woman?” address on May 29, 1851, an Ohio Historical Marker was unveiled in 1981. In 2024, Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza opened in Akron, with a statue of her by artist and Akron resident Woodrow Nash.