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Newspaper report · Delivered May 1851; reported 21 June 1851

Sojourner Truth at the Akron Convention, 1851

By Sojourner Truth

About This Document

Date
Delivered May 1851; reported 21 June 1851
Type
Newspaper report
Rights
Public domain in the United States (published 1851).

Historical Context

In late May 1851 the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention met in the Stone Church in Akron. Frances Dana Gage, who had organized the meeting, presided and gave the opening address. Over two days the delegates debated whether men and women were equal and whether the cause of women should be joined to the cause of the enslaved. Among the speakers was Sojourner Truth, born into slavery in New York’s Hudson Valley around 1797, whose first language was Dutch. Having freed herself in the 1820s, she took the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 and became an itinerant preacher and antislavery speaker.

Marius Robinson, editor of the Anti-Slavery Bugle of Salem, Ohio, and a friend of Truth’s, served as the convention’s secretary. On 21 June 1851 he printed the report reproduced here, the earliest full account of what she said. It is written in standard English. It argues from her strength and labor, from scripture, and from the plain justice of letting a woman have “her little pint full,” and it does not contain the phrase “Ain’t I a woman?” Robinson and Truth are reported to have gone over his transcription together before it was published.

The version most people know appeared twelve years later, in 1863, when Gage published her recollection of the speech in the New York Independent. Gage wrote from memory, and by her own account gave only “a faint sketch”; she rendered Truth’s words in a Southern plantation dialect that Truth, a New Yorker, never spoke, built the speech around the refrain “Ar’n’t I a woman?”, and had her claim thirteen children, most sold away, although Truth’s own history records five. Gage’s text, later smoothed into “Ain’t I a Woman?”, has been reprinted far more often than Robinson’s and has shaped the popular memory of Truth.

This site presents Robinson’s report as the text of the speech because it was published within weeks of the event by an eyewitness whose job was to record the proceedings, and because it did not pass through a decade of retelling. Gage’s account is a document of how Truth was remembered and dramatized during the Civil War, not a record of what she said in Akron, and it should be read that way. The National Park Service invites readers to compare the two texts for themselves.

The Document

Full text of Robinson’s report, transcribed from the Library of Congress’s digitized page of the Anti-Slavery Bugle (page 4). Where the machine-read text of the 1851 page is damaged, letters and punctuation were restored by comparison with published transcriptions. Robinson’s spellings (“cant,” “dont,” “wont”) are kept.

Women's Rights Convention. Sojourner Truth.

One of the most unique and interesting speeches of the Convention was made by Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave. It is impossible to transfer it to paper, or convey any adequate idea of the effect it produced upon the audience. Those only can appreciate it who saw her powerful form, her whole-souled, earnest gesture, and listened to her strong and truthful tones. She came forward to the platform and addressing the President said with great simplicity:

May I say a few words? Receiving an affirmative answer, she proceeded: 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 woman have a pint and man a quart—why cant 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 cant take more than our pint'll hold. The poor men seem to be all in confusion, and dont 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 wont be so much trouble. I cant 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 woman who bore him. Man, where is 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, and he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.

Transcription: Marius Robinson, “Women’s Rights Convention. Sojourner Truth,” Anti-Slavery Bugle (Salem, Ohio), 21 June 1851, p. 4. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. View the source

Questions for Discussion

  1. Robinson writes that it is “impossible to transfer” the speech to paper. What might a written report lose, and how should that shape the way we read any record of a speech?
  2. What kinds of evidence does Truth use to argue for women’s rights: her body and labor, scripture, common sense? Which do you find most persuasive, and why?
  3. Truth says the man is caught “between a hawk and a buzzard,” with “the poor slave” and “woman” both coming on him. What is she saying about the relationship between the antislavery and women’s rights movements?
  4. Compare Robinson’s 1851 report with Frances Gage’s 1863 version. What did Gage add or change, and why might a white writer during the Civil War have remembered the speech that way?
  5. Gage’s refrain is far better known than anything in Robinson’s report. What is gained and what is lost when a memorable later version replaces the historical record?

Sources

  1. Marius Robinson, “Women’s Rights Convention. Sojourner Truth,” Anti-Slavery Bugle, 21 June 1851, p. 4, Library of Congress, Chronicling America (page text via the Library of Congress text service). Link
  2. National Park Service, “Ain’t I a Woman?” (lesson comparing the Robinson and Gage texts). Link
  3. National Park Service, “Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman?” Link
  4. The Sojourner Truth Project, “Compare the Speeches.” Link
  5. Hanover College History Department, “Sojourner Truth, Ain’t I a Woman? 1851” (transcriptions of the Gage and Robinson texts). Link

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