"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.

"I Have a Dream" and the Gettysburg Address

The August 24 March on Washington this past weekend commemorated the 1963 March, which culminated in the first Civil Rights Act, passed in 1964, but the actual 50^th anniversary is today, August 28, 2013.  Fifty years ago today Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech (http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf), which, along with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm), is perhaps the best known piece of political oratory in American history.

King directly ties his speech to the American Dream and reminds us how that dream has been denied to most African Americans since they first set foot on American soil. 

When we think of the American Dream, most of us think first of economic prosperity, or, or at least the opportunity to achieve it.  We think of “the land of opportunity,” as countless immigrants have seen us, and the “rags to riches” myth of upward social mobility.  I say “myth” because, while it captures a universal aspiration and is a widespread belief, its reality has been denied to as many, probably more, than have achieved it, however hard-working and virtuous they may have been.

Yet the American Dream represents more than economic success; it also stands for political freedom, social equality, and personal fulfillment.  And King’s speech references those values as much, even more, than it does the dream of material prosperity.

If it is as famous as the Gettysburg Address, what characteristics does it share with Lincoln’s best known speech?  They both rest on what might be better called the American Promise than the American Dream.  They both expressly quote from the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” and King cites the “unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

While Lincoln does not name the blight of slavery, he ties the principle of equality to “the unfinished work which those who fought here have so nobly advanced,” “the great task remaining before us,” and “our increased devotion to that great cause” for which so many have died.  Lincoln calls for “a new birth of freedom.”  Without saying so directly, he frames the Civil War as a struggle to fulfill that original promise of full political and social equality.

King, on the other hand, directly names the failures of that promise a century after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863—“segregation,” “discrimination,” “poverty,” and “police brutality.”  But, like Lincoln, he calls for a new resolve to fulfill the original promise of the American Dream—the promise of “liberty and justice for all.”

Both speakers are addressing but half the nation, Lincoln, the Union, still in the midst of war with the Confederacy; and King, African Americans and their white allies in the grip of struggle with segregationists and white supremacists.

 Lincoln’s rhetorical task is somewhat easier.  As he dedicates a burial ground for the Union dead, he is able to freely use “our” and “we” without excluding any of his Union audience, establishing an unqualified identification with his listeners that serves to unify them in their shared experience, values, and grand national cause.

King’s audience consists of both African Americans and white supporters.  He can use “our” and “we” when referring to their shared values and civil rights struggle, but often refers to African Americans in third person when referring to their experiences of racial injustice.  He sets aside a part of his speech to acknowledge “our white brothers,” who have come to realize that “their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”  And the dream is expressed in terms of full inclusion for all, not only in the segregationist South, but also in “our Northern cities,” “the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire,” “the mighty mountains of New York,” and “the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.” “Our” and “we” shift back and forth from civil rights supporters to African Americans to all Americans.

Lincoln makes no reference to the enemies of freedom and equality in the slave-holding South.  The lines of war are clearly drawn and well understood.  His focus throughout his speech is the noble ideal of the Union cause.  The ignoble cause of the Confederacy is merely implied by unspoken comparison.

King, on the other hand, is concerned, not only with the legal segregation of the South but with the “slums and ghettoes” of the North.  And while he invokes the history of slavery and the “vicious racists” in the South, his dream is large enough to include all Americans sitting together “at the table of brotherhood,” joining hands “as sisters and brothers.”  He includes segregationists and racists in his dream of “all God’s children,” including blacks and whites, “Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics” singing together as equals “the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, Free at last, Great God Almighty, We are free at last.”

Thus as Lincoln transcends the divisions of the Civil War by focusing on the ideal of a nation united in freedom and equality, so King transcends the divisions of race by focusing on a dream that is all inclusive, even to the point of including white people in the words of a Negro spiritual.

The language of the two speeches is very different.  Lincoln’s is more solemn and stately, as befitting the dedication of a national cemetery, and more abstract, as befitting, perhaps, the more ceremonial occasion.  King’s language is more concrete, metaphorical, poetic, emotive, and rousing as he seeks to mobilize a movement in pursuit of legal redresses for a long history of suffering.  Lincoln is not making an abolitionist speech, but rather seeking to strengthen Union resolve to see the war through to its end.  King does not have the standing of national office from which to speak and must use his language to establish himself as a credible leader and to inspire his followers by putting memorable words to the dream in all their hearts.

Lincoln uses the language of a civic leader while King uses that of a preacher and an activist.  Yet their argument is the same:  the American Promise remains unfulfilled and its realization is worthy of sacrifice.  Our nation’s greatness, our nation’s future, and our nation’s endurance depend upon it.

Both also see themselves as renewing the original American Promise, both invoking the Declaration of Independence, King invoking the Emancipation Proclamation.  Taken together the two speeches mark historical milestones in the ongoing effort to realize the Dream.

"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"

In honor of Independence Day this year, 237 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I decided to reread Frederick Douglass’ speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” delivered on July 5, 1852.  It didn’t occur to me at the time that the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin would be announced before I got my blog post done.

My original thought was to write about the speech as an under-appreciated rhetorical achievement in the history of American letters, but the death of Trayvon Martin and the court case against George Zimmerman dramatizes the continuing relevance of Douglass’ core argument.  And that may be more important than the brilliance of Douglass’ rhetoric.

First, let me say that I harbor no ill will toward the jury in the Zimmerman case.  As I watched the trial unfold on TV these last few weeks, I kept thinking how glad I was that I was not on the jury.  Though I felt that Zimmerman should be held accountable for profiling and stalking Martin while carrying a concealed weapon, I was not persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that the actual killing rose to the level of murder, or even manslaughter, given the Florida self-defense law. 

Correct verdict under the law or not, though, it does not seem to rise to the level of justice either.  It seems like yet another example of an African American citizen being denied full equality in a nation that just weeks before the verdict had celebrated its promise of individual rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” of equality under the law, and of “liberty and justice for all.” 

Douglass was invited to deliver his oration at Corinthian Hall, Rochester, New York, to celebrate our nation’s founding as a free and independent state, guaranteeing liberty and justice to its people.  It was a ceremonial occasion and, in some ways, Douglass meets expectations by praising the nation’s founders and the high ideals inscribed in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.  But Douglass takes the opportunity to turn the speech into a political one, focusing on the inconsistency of a slaveholding society espousing the values of equality and liberty and calling for the abolition of slavery.  After excoriating his audience for the hypocrisy of celebrating the 4^th of July while allowing the injustices and cruelties of slavery to exist, Douglass ends by holding out hope that our nation will someday uphold the values and ideals embedded in our founding documents.

A similar argument could be made today.  How do we celebrate our nation’s founding and its highest civic values on one day and on another day in the same month watch as lawyers in our “justice” system defend their client by justifying racial profiling and the killing of an unarmed black teenager on grounds of self-defense when that client had deliberately stalked that innocent teenager walking home in the rain?  Yes, we can hold out hope that Zimmerman will be held accountable in a wrongful death suit and that someday our nation and its citizens will truly live up to the ideals they espouse and celebrate, but that is cold comfort to those who mourn the loss of Trayvon Martin, who will never again  walk home.

Even though Frederick Douglass had been invited by the white civic leaders of Rochester, New York, to deliver this ceremonial speech, he knew full well that their deference to him was only for superficial show.  That is why in his opening words he presents himself as a modest, self-deprecating public speaker and why he goes on to position himself as an outsider, who, like all African Americans, slave or free, cannot enjoy the full benefits of “your” 4^th of July, “your” Declaration of Independence, or “your” heritage of equality and freedom.  And that is also why he presents himself as an educated, well-spoken, eloquent speaker whose performance belies his modesty and indirectly argues for his full equality with those privileged white civic leaders.  Douglass references the nation’s founding documents, the words of its forefathers, the Bible, as well as his own educated white contemporaries and in so doing establishes his literacy, his education, his credibility, and his humanity, despite having been born into slavery.

Repeating a common trope of African American rhetoric, he compares his people to the Biblical Hebrews who suffered under slavery in Egypt and were delivered to freedom in the Promised Land.  He lifts up the suffering of American slaves, drawing on powerful emotional imagery to dramatize their plight: 

“…I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder.  There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, the caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men.  My soul sickens at the sight.”

               Throughout, both directly and indirectly, he holds up the mirror of hypocrisy to those who would celebrate their national Independence Day:

 “            "The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie.”

How many “free” African Americans today join in our 4^th of July celebrations with conflicted hearts,

remembering the injustices of the past along with the promises of our founders, smarting from their

own experiences of prejudice and racism, and questioning, like Douglass, whether this 4^th of July

celebration includes them?

Although Douglass is speaking of American slavery, he himself was free, though under the Fugitive Slave Law he could be returned to his owner at any time should that owner be identified, and while he had escaped the slavery of the South, he lived with the racism of the North, the very racism of those who had the temerity to invite an escaped slave to deliver their 4^th of July oration, as if he were one of them.  Only the blind arrogance of misplaced self-righteousness could expect the victims of racism to praise their oppressors’ history and values.

Yet Douglass concludes with faith in the Constitution, and while that may undercut his verbal assault on American hypocrisy, it nonetheless saves him and us from despair.  His call to action would fail did he not leave his audience with hope of abolishing slavery and racism.

Similarly, may the realization of our own contemporary failures in overcoming color prejudice and racism leave us not in despair but with renewed conviction that our anti-racist words and actions are not in vain and that the dream of people like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King for full equality and justice for all may someday be achieved in our country.  (See also previous blog post on Frederick Douglass *Narrative of an American Slave,* December 2009.)

"What's God Got to Do With It? Robert Ingersoll on Free Thought, Honest Talk & the Separation of Church & State" edited by Tim Page

Considering the near hostility with which Robert Ingersoll treats religion, it is amazing that he was such a popular and successful travelling orator in the latter half of the 19th century. Considering the role that religion plays in politics today, it is amazing that just over a century ago Ingersoll, not only got away with his attacks on religion, but made a living doing it.

In the debate between science and religion that, either spoken or unspoken, wound its way through post-Civil War America, Ingersoll was unabashedly and unapologetically on the side of science. One way of explaining his success with popular audiences, immersed as they were in traditional Christianity, might be the same as we explain today’s popularity of adulterous, alcoholic, drug-addicted, wife-beating celebrities; reality TV; or shows like Jerry Springer. We are attracted to that which repulses us.

Another, more serious explanation, though, can be found in a study of Ingersoll’s rhetoric. His attack on religion is balanced by an equally strong patriotic fervor for our founding national documents, “The Declaration of Independence” and the U.S. Constitution. However shocked his audiences may have been at his public pronouncements of agnosticism (some would say atheism), they would have identified with his patriotism, his praise for our founding fathers, and his many honorifics on behalf of such founding principles of our nation as individual freedom, pursuit of happiness, and the absence of state religion.

Of these, the separation of church and state was the centerpiece for Ingersoll. Here again, while his audience might have secretly questioned the idea of a godless government, they would have been reassured by Ingersoll’s defense of their freedom to believe and to worship as they chose without interference from that godless government.

In addition, Ingersoll leavened his religious heresy with colorful language, resounding hyperbole, charming humor, and tender sentiment to win over the pious and entertain the faithful.

The harshness of his tone when attacking religion would have been redeemed by the unmistakable joy he took in Christmas (pagan holiday though it may be) and his praise for human love. His provocative persona was softened by the warmth of his humanity.

From my perspective Ingersoll was an advanced thinker for his time but also shallow and naïve. His rejection of religion is wholesale. He points out the harm it has caused but fails to acknowledge the good it has done. He praises secularism without recognizing the dangers of materialism. He upholds freedom of speech as an absolute without consideration for the destructive power of lies, slander, deliberate falsehoods, verbal harassment, and the incendiary effect of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded room.

The breadth and sweep of his thought was greater than its depth and complexity. I would respect his work more had he made some effort to reconcile science and religion, not just put them at odds.

Elmer Gantry

What George Lakoff analyzes scientifically and linguistically (see previous post), Sinclair Lewis dramatizes (somewhat melodramatically) in Elmer Gantry, his 1927 fictional satire on evangelical Christianity in America. Gantry is a master manipulator and rhetorical razzledazzler, who uses religion and human gullibility to gratify his own ego, satisfy his own desire, and build his own social power. He instinctively knows how to find the right frame and milk the right metaphor to take optimum advantage of his rhetorical situation.

Lakoff does not address the ethics of strategic framing, manipulation of metaphors, and the use of emotional appeals. Back in 1927, Lewis used those same methods to expose how they can be misused by a skillful and charismatic rhetorician to deceive, mislead, and harm an unsuspecting and ill-prepared audience.

Lewis uses the well-established frame of the American success story. In three different episodes Elmer Gantry rises from relative obscurity to a position of power. In the first third of the novel, he goes from irreligious student in a Baptist college to ordained minister to small congregation pastor. After disgracing himself, he begins the second episode as a traveling salesman and rises to prominence as right-hand-man and lover to a nationally known touring woman evangelist. After a fire destroys his evangelical ambitions as well as his lover and patron, Gantry joins the New Thought movement before becoming a Methodist minister, marrying a minister's daughter, who has been groomed as the perfect minister's wife, and moving up as a leading crusader against vice and the first radio broadcasting preacher in his state. He is nearly brought down by a couple of scam artists, who use sex and flattery to trap him in scandal, but, as on previous occasions, he manages to wriggle free, return to his pulpit, and begin eyeing his next young conquest in the choir.

Each episode follows the pattern of a rise to social power, sexual temptation, a fall from power, and a restoration. Gantry's success story is, of course, a satirical inversion of the popular narrative, designed to target evangelical hypocrisy, of which we have seen enough in the last 40 years to make Gantry's exploits seem tame. Lewis' satire seems almost equally directed at the naive and gullible followers of unscrupulous evangelism. It could also be read as a critique of the archetypal American success story itself, which not only falsifies the typical American experience but undermines the validity of the socially successful hero.

The irony is that, like every other creative writer, Lewis uses the methods of narrative framing, metaphor, strategic appeals to values, and emotionally connotative language in his critique of those who misuse such methods and those who fall for them.

Another way of viewing the novel is as a trickster narrative, in which the mischeievous "hero" clarifies the social norms by breaking them. The trickster character is often admired for challenging the social rules. In the case of Elmer Gantry, however, the character functions to expose the hypocrisy of our most socially admired social heros, our religious leaders.

While, in some respects, the novel seems dated, in others, it seems all too reflective of current reality, in which public figures in both religion and politics who uphold principles of "sexual purity" and "family values" and are vocal in their conemnation of those who don't act in accordance with such principles are revealed to be as two-faced and hypocritical as the now iconic Elmer Gantry.