“I am a woman’s rights.” - Sojourner Truth, from her speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio on May 29, 1851.

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York. She escaped to freedom with her infant daughter in 1826. She won her son’s freedom in court, becoming the first black woman to win such a legal case against a white man. She gave herself the name “Sojourner Truth” in 1843 after experiencing a call from God to evangelize.

During the Civil War she recruited black soldiers to fight for the Union Army. Her grandson served in the 102nd Infantry and she wrote patriotic hymns to the tune of “John Brown’s Body” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Her speech at the Women’s Rights Convention is widely referred to as her “Ain’t I A Woman” address. However, she never spoke those words. There is a vast difference between the address as it was initially reported in The Anti-Slavery Bugle at the time and the later version which was re-constructed by the white abolitionist Frances Dana Gage twelve years later. Truth was born in upstate New York and spoke Dutch in her early years, the Southern dialect of the later reconstructed speech was a gross mischaracterization of her speech. You can compare both speeches here.

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This icon is the fifth in a new series: A People’s History of American Religion. $10 of every purchase benefits the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a community bail fund.