When the Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza is unveiled Wednesday, May 29, visitors will not find the words “Ain’t I a Woman?” anywhere. Although many attribute the phrase to Truth, historians believe that the famous version of the speech is not the correct version, and it is unlikely Truth ever uttered the phrase.
Truth (originally named Isabella Bomefree – also spelled “Baumfree”) was born into slavery in New York in 1797. She and her daughter escaped in 1827. After a family bought her freedom, Truth successfully sued the man who purchased her son from out of state, which was then illegal under New York law. In 1851, Truth spoke at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, delivering what is now known as the “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech.
The version of the speech that many know was actually written 12 years later by Frances Gage, the abolitionist and women’s rights activist who oversaw the convention. It was printed in the April 23, 1863, edition of The Independent, a weekly magazine in New York City. The speech was written in a Southern slave dialect, but Truth was enslaved in New York, and her first language was Dutch.
Gage’s version is where the title of the speech came from:
Look at me.
Look at my arm.
I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me.
-and ar’n’t I a woman?
Thanks to the work of historian Nell Irvin Painter, who wrote the 1997 book “Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol,” many now agree that the more accurate version of Truth’s speech was the one written by Marius Robinson and printed in the June 21, 1851, edition of his newspaper, The Anti-Slavery Bugle. At the time, the paper was printed in Salem, Ohio.
Why Gage’s version is the one history remembers best
As Leianne Neff Heppner, president and CEO of The Summit County Historical Society explained, Truth was friends with Robinson and his wife Emily and traveled with them to the convention. She said Robinson wrote the speech based on his memory and that it was then approved by Truth. The phrase “Ain’t I a woman?” or any variation of it is never mentioned.
So why is Gage’s version the one that stuck? Neff Heppner said it boiled down to time and place.
“[The Anti-Slavery Bugle] was a small publication and in a small area, as Salem isn’t a very big place. So it would have had a group of people that were dedicated to it, but it didn’t have a very large subscription,” she said. “Access to written word was limited at that time as well, in terms of how far that paper [would] have traveled.”
When Gage’s version was printed, America was two years into the Civil War. Neff Heppner can’t say for certain, but she suspects Gage viewed her version as a chance to “be part of a larger cause.”
Although Robinson’s version is now considered the more accurate one, no one will ever know exactly what Truth said when she spoke at the convention. Neff Heppner said Truth’s speech that day was unplanned and off the cuff.
“She had an amazing presence, besides her stature,” Neff Heppner said. “The way she phrased things and read them, people really admired her, because she was funny but also very poignant and blunt at times. … She was very religious, and so she used biblical references, because it was important to her, but also she knew that her audience could relate to what she was saying, because of their religious practices as well.”
To read and hear both versions of Truth’s speech, visit thesojournertruthproject.com.