Happy Women's Day!

Let's celebrate International Women's Day , which is tomorrow, March 8th, with an homage to a great woman and human being. A woman who rose in spite of the things against her for not only was she a woman in the 19th century but also black and a former slave.
Sojourner Truth was an an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. She was born into slavery, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826.She had to leave her other children behind because they were not legally freed in the emancipation order until they had served as bound servants into their twenties. She later said:

"I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right."

She was also one of the first black women to go to court against a white man and win the case.
In 1851 she attended the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio where she delivered her famous speech on racial inequalities,  "Ain't I a Woman". Marius Robinson, who attended the convention and worked with Truth, recorded his version of the speech in the June 21, 1851, issue of the Anti-Slavery Bugle.
^"One of the most unique and interesting speeches of the convention was made by Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave. It is impossible to transfer it to paper, or convey any adequate idea of the effect it produced upon the audience. Those only can appreciate it who saw her powerful form, her whole-souled, earnest gesture, and listened to her strong and truthful tones. She came forward to the platform and addressing the President said with great simplicity: "May I say a few words?" Receiving an affirmative answer, she proceeded:"

---

 Ain't I A Woman?

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! 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 the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most 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?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? 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, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.


In the following video, Poet Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple) reads the 1851 speech as part of a reading from Voices of a People's History of the United States (Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove,) November 11, 2006 in Berkeley, California.