Who Is Sojourner Truth's 'Ain' T I A Woman?

Numerous people perceive the name, Sojourner Truth, as the black women’s activist of the nineteenth century. Being black did not necessarily hinder Truth because many slave narratives were already very successful in the nineteenth century. But, being a woman did affect her recognition to society as an author and abolitionist. At the Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association on May 9, 1867 she declared "I am glad to see that men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and while the water is stirring I will step into the pool" (Archives). To request equivalent rights among the races was unheard of and sufficiently horrendous to numerous, yet to request racial and sexual equity was basically
"When we get our rights we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough in our own pockets; and maybe you will ask us for money" (Archives). Truth spoke what would be her most famous speech “Ain’t I a Woman” at the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio in 1851. She brought to the audience’s attention the need of conserving women’s fragility and dignity, singling out a male speaker at the convention. He proclaimed “women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches and to have the best place everywhere.” Contradicting this argument, she said “Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles or gives me any best place, and aren't I a woman?" (Campbell 100). Truth talked with regards to women’s rights in an effective manner that depended upon her own particular experience and instinct and upon an open-minded comprehension of human equality. Her religious thinking implemented her to approach biblical debates against women’s equality in a charming but intelligent way, as shown in this reply to a clergyman’s speech: “Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as Men, 'cause Christ wasn't a