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ST
19th Century
Sojourner Truth
c. 1797–1883 · Abolition & women's rights
'Ar'n't I a woman?'
In their words
“Ain't I a woman?”
Born enslaved in New York and freed by state law, Truth renamed herself and traveled as an itinerant preacher and abolitionist. At the 1851 Akron convention she answered ministers who claimed women were too delicate for rights by arguing from her own strength and her own scars. She spoke plainly against legalized inequality of both race and sex at a time when almost no one did either.
Why it matters for freedom
She demanded that a universal claim be universal, in front of an audience that had not noticed the contradiction.
Who they stood against
slavery and the preachers who told women to be silent