Sojourner Truth: Part Two: The Speech and the Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza by Beth Bartlett

Part one was posted yesterday.

Most of us are quite familiar with Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech as recorded by Frances Gage several years later, with its powerful “ain’t I a woman” refrain.  However, the actual speech as transcribed at the time by Marius Robinson, while similar in content, does not contain the refrain. Rather, Truth simply states that she is “a woman’s rights” woman.[i]  It is unlikely that she spoke in the southern dialect Gage used in her transcription, since Truth grew up knowing only Dutch, eventually learning English as spoken in New York, and probably spoke with a Dutch accent. Much of the content in the Gage version was fabricated – such as the statement that she bore thirteen children, when she only had five children, though she did cry out in a mother’s grief when she learned that her only son, Peter, had been illegally sold south to Alabama.[ii]

In the more accurate version of Truth’s speech, she claims women’s equality with men by referencing her own story – how she had done “men’s” work all her life and was equally as strong, remarking “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 can carry as much as any man. . . I am as strong as any man that is now.”  Indeed, her former master said of her, “’that wench is better to me than a man—for she will do a good family’s washing in the night, and be ready in the morning to go into the field, where she will do as much at raking and binding as my best hands.’”[iii] She didn’t claim the same intellect as a man, perhaps because she herself was illiterate, but she didn’t think that should disqualify women from having the same rights as men, and certainly, she argued, women should be able freely to exercise the intellect they did have.  Finally, as a religious and faithful woman, referencing Eve and how women have been subordinated to men because of “Eve’s sin,” she argued, “if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again.” She spoke of how Jesus welcomed women, never rejected them, and perhaps most famously notes how Jesus was born of God and a woman, and asks, “Man, where is your part?”  I can imagine the few women in the mostly male crowed laughing and cheering at that remark! She closed by saying “the women are coming up blessed be God.” 

Though she never actually used the line, “Ain’t I a woman?”, this was the essential question of her speech, for certainly Black enslaved women had been doing the work of men and been treated as enslaved Black men and worse for centuries in this country.  But as a Black woman, she had not been regarded as a woman, but rather as something else, something lesser.  Her remarks raised the consciousness of her listeners, and advocated equally for racial and gender equality. 

As a native of Akron, I had long been aware of the lack of any tribute to Truth in Akron, and for years from a distance had been hoping to connect with others who were interested in taking up such a project with me.  At long last, I was able to find someone in the Women’s Studies department at the University of Akron who connected me with the Sojourner Truth Project, a project that had been begun decades ago, but had languished after its leader, former Women’s Studies professor at the University of Akron, Faye Hersh Dambrot died in 2000.  It was picked up again in 2019.  Since then, the excitement has built as funds have been raised and a plaza dedicated to Truth has been built under the leadership of Towanda Mullins, who garnered the support of the Akron City Council’s Park and Recreation Committee and then the full Council. And on the 173^rd anniversary of Truth’s speech, the evening of May 29^th, 2024, a six-foot bronze statue of Truth, created by local artist Woodrow Nash was unveiled. It was a great celebration with guest speakers, including one of Truth’s descendants, music, a ribbon cutting, and of course, the unveiling. The statue itself, a life-sized replica of Truth, is compelling. One can easily hear her delivering her powerful speech.

The Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza in which the statue stands is a stunning tribute to her life, with a path winding throughout marking the milestones of Truth’s life.  Four pillars rise up from the plaza in remembrance of the four pillars of the Old Stone Universalist Church where Truth gave her speech, each one dedicated to the four pillars of her life and beliefs – activism, identity,  power, and faith. Placards on the pillars display famous quotes from Truth’s life. The landscape architect who designed the plaza, Dion Harris, remarked that he “wanted to make every aspect mean something,”[iv] and he certainly succeeded in doing that. Being in that space, surrounded by her life and words and visage was a very powerful experience for me.  As Harris said of her, “Truth was one of those people who took her truth, took how she lived and was able to tell everyone about it and make something positive happen in the end if she wasn’t alive to see some of it.”[v]  I have long admired her, and am so grateful to all those who made this possible, and am thrilled finally to see her life and legacy honored in the place where she first gave that famous speech.

Sources

Schreck, Isabella. “Plaza dedication to honor legacy of Sojourner Truth,” Akron Beacon Journal, May 26, 2024, 1A and 5A

Truth, Sojourner. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Ed. and with an Introduction by Margaret Washington. New York: Vintage, 1993.

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[i] For a comparison of the two versions of Truth’s speech, see Compare the Speeches — The Sojourner Truth Project.

[ii] She worked with lawyers and the grand jury in New York to secure Peter’s return and eventual emancipation, and was the first Black woman successfully to sue a white man.

[iii] Truth, Narrative, 20.

[iv] Harris, quoted in Shreck.

[v] Ibid.