Sojourner Truth

If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it?

Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

Sojourner Truth (c.1797 – 1883), originally named Isabella Bomefree, then Baumfree, former slave, author, and social activist.

Sourced

• Sisters, I ain't clear what you be after. If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it?
  • As quoted in Sojourner Truth : A Self-made Woman (1974) by Victoria Ortiz

Ain't I a Woman? Speech (1851)

Speech delivered 1851, at the Women's Convention, Akron, Ohio.

• That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives 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 the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen 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?

• That little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Jesus Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

External links

• Works by Sojourner Truth at Project Gutenberg
• Sojourner Truth: Online Resources, from the Library of Congress
• On the trail of Sojourner Truth, Sojourner Truth Library
• Sojourner Truth Institute
• Poem form of Ain't I a Woman?
• Profile at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Learning to Give site
• Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828 (1850)
• Narrative of Sojourner Truth; a Bondswoman of Olden Time, Emancipated by the New York Legislature in the Early Part of the Present Century; with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence, Drawn from Her "Book of Life" (1875).
• Narrative of Sojourner Truth; a Bondswoman of Olden Time, Emancipated by the New York Legislature in the Early Part of the Present Century; with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her "Book of Life;" Also, a Memorial Chapter, Giving the Particulars of Her Last Sickness and Death (1884)
• The Narrative of Sojurner Truth from American Studies at the University of Virginia