"Ain't I a Woman?"

Recently I saw a flurry of activity online regarding Sojourner Truth’s famous oration “Ain’t I a Woman?”  I thought it might be an anniversary of the speech, but when I finally had time to look it up I found it was delivered on May 29, 1851, at a Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.  Given that I had blogged on the famous speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. (see previous post August, 2013), it seemed appropriate to rank Sojourner Truth right up there with them. 

The problem is that her speech was extemporaneous.  Unable to read or write, Sojourner Truth dictated her memoirs to a friend, but left no written version of her speech.  One of her fellow abolitionists, Marius Robinson, who attended the convention with her, published his transcription of her address in the June 21, 1851, issue of the Anti-Slavery Bugle, an abolitionist newspaper:

“I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman's rights. 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.”

Twelve years later, in 1863, Frances Dana Parker Gage, an abolitionist and women’s rights activist, published a different version, which has become the accepted and famous one:

"Wall, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be somethin' out o' kilter. I tink dat 'twixt de niggers of de Souf and de womin at de Norf, all talkin' 'bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all dis here talkin' 'bout?"

"Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs 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 de lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos' 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?"

"Den dey talks 'bout dis ting in de head; what dis dey call it?" ("Intellect," whispered someone near.) "Dat's it, honey. What's dat got to do wid womin's rights or nigger's rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?"

"Den dat little man in back dar, he say women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wan't a woman! Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to do wid Him."

"If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese women togedder ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now dey is asking to do it, de men better let 'em 'Bleeged to ye for hearin' on me, and now ole Sojourner han't got nothin' more to say."

Besides the obvious differences in content, including the famous title “Ain’t I a Woman?” Gage gave Sojourner Truth a Southern “plantation dialect,” but the ex-slave was born in New York and grew up speaking Dutch until she was nine years old.  She may have had an accent, but it wouldn't have been of the style rendered by Gage. In addition, instead of 13 children, most of whom were sold into slavery, as Gage has it, it is documented elsewhere that Truth had five children, only one of whom was sold into slavery. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain%27t_I_a_Woman%3F)

Given the lack of any written record and the 12-year time difference, it seems fair to conclude the famous version of the speech is as much Gage as Truth.  Some of the stylistic devices and content appear in both versions and might be taken to be most authentic, and Gage seems to have based her “liberties” on the original.  However, Gage has no doubt tailored the 1851 speech and her commentary on it to suit, not only her distant memory, but her own rhetorical purposes in 1863.

We can surmise that the original relied on the devices of repetition, colloquialism, and Biblical allusion; the claim to be as strong as a man; the plea that women are due their “pint” of rights compared to a man’s “quart”; and the  argument that Christ was born of women without any help from a man.  All these appear in both versions. 

It clearly makes the most sense to consider Sojourner Truth’s speech as part of the oral tradition, a kind of folk literature.  The author may not be “anonymous” in this case, but we have no way of knowing the exact form of the original.

Should Sojourner Truth be ranked with Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., as an orator?  It is made more difficult to say without the ability to compare authentic texts, not to mention delivery.  However, her speech clearly made a memorable impression on its audience of the time.  How many other speeches from the abolitionist and women’s rights movements have entered into the cultural mainstream?  If the familiar version is greatly embroidered, it may be so in part because the original was so powerful.