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Sojourner Truth
(1797 - 1883)
Aint I A Woman?
Originally Published in The Liberator 22
(March 16, 1855)Than man over there say
A woman needs to be helped into carriages
And lifted over ditches
And to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages
Or over mud puddles
Or gives me a best place
.
And aint I a woman?
Look at me
Look at my arm!
I have plowed and planted
and gathered into barns
And no man could head me
And aint I a woman?
I could work as much
and eat as much as a man--
When I could get to it--
and bear the lash as well
and aint I a woman?
I have born 13 children
and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mothers grief
none but Jesus heard me
and aint I a woman?
that little man in black there say
a woman cant have as much rights as a man
cause Christ wasnt a woman
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world
upside down, all alone
together women ought to be able to turn it
rightside up again. |

(Library of Congress)
Sojourner Truth was born
into slavery in New York State. Her original name was Born Isabella Bomefree.
Truth, with the help of Quakers escaped to freedom in 1827.
A deeply religious woman, Truth was know as an articulate crusader for
women's rights and abolitionist. |
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Sojourner
Truth: A Life, A Symbol
Click to order via
Amazon
by Nell
Irvin Painter
ISBN: 0393317080
Format: Paperback, 370pp
Pub. Date: September 1997
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Sojourner Truth: ex-slave and fiery abolitionist, figure of imposing
physique, riveting preacher and spellbinding singer who dazzled
listeners with her wit and originality. Straight talking and
unsentimental, Truth became a national symbol for strong black women -
indeed, for all strong women. Like Harriet Tubman and Frederick
Douglass, she is regarded as a radical of immense and enduring
influence; yet unlike them, what is remembered of her consists more of
myth than of historical fact. Now, in a masterful blend of scholarship
and sympathetic understanding, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter goes
beyond the myths, words, and photographs to uncover the life of a
complex woman who was born into slavery and died a legend. Inspired by
religion, Truth transformed herself from a domestic servant named
Isabella into an itinerant Pentecostal preacher; her words of
empowerment have inspired black women and poor people the world over to
this day. As an abolitionist and a feminist, Truth defied the stereotype
of "the slave" as male and "the woman" as white - expounding a fact that
still bears repeating: among blacks there are women; among women, there
are blacks.
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