In 1851, a middle-aged woman of almost six feet, with a deep speaking voice and an unerring eye for a catchy phrase, got to her feet in the midst of the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. “ I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well!” Sojourner Truth declared to the audience. “And ain't I a woman? I have borne 13 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?”
The “Ain’t I a Woman” speech—which Sojourner delivered impromptu—has since gone down in history as one of the most famous feminist and abolitionist speeches ever made. But there …show more content…
When her parents’ owner died, she was separated from her family and sold to a vicious English yeoman who had little reservation about stripping nine-year-old Belle and beating her until blood poured from her wounds into the ground. She was eventually sold three more times, and finally ended up at the household of a landowner called John …show more content…
In 1817, lawmakers in New York state promised that all slaves who were born before 1799 would be freed in a decade’s time. But Sojourner’s desire for freedom was growing faster than time allowed; she already had seen her mother die of palsy and her elderly father freeze to death after he was abandoned by his owners. Dumont promised to free her a year ahead of the emancipation deadline if she worked hard in the fields, and she began to labor with such intensity and determination that she accidentally chopped off a finger. Then Dumont changed his mind, claiming that the injury had cost her time and that he could not free her ahead of schedule.
All her life, Sojourner had nurtured a deep sense of prophet-like connection to God, attributing her speaking talent to the divine and asserting that God’s voice instructed her in all she did. It was the Holy Spirit, she maintained that led her to cast off her slave name. Now divine guidance told Sojourner that she couldn’t wait. Carrying a knapsack on her back and her child Sophia in her arms, she