USC Being a Woman in the Shadow of Racism Blog Post

Reading scholarly work on questions of diversity, exclusion and inclusion in this course. You will write a blog reflecting upon those issues, but rather than offering an unsubstantiated opinion on these matters, you’ll be expected to offer a unique but informed opinion supported by scholarly research and empirical evidence.

You will have freedom to choose the topic and the particular angle of the issue as you wish to explore it.

Speech Entitled “Ain’t I a Woman?”
by
Sojourner Truth
Delivered at the 1851 Women’s Convention in Akron,
Ohio
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something
out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the Negroes of the South and the women
at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty
soon. But what’s all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages,
and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody
ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best
place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have
ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head
me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a
man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a
woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to
slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus
heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it?
[member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that
got to do with women’s rights or Negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold
but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me
have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much
rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ
Sojourner Truth “Ain’t I Woman?”, Speech Delivered at Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, May 1851
come from? 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, these women together ought to be able to turn it
back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it. The
men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing
more to say.
2
Created for Lit2Go on the web at etc.usf.edu
Voices of Democracy 7 (2012): 21‐ 46
Phillips‐Anderson 21
SOJOURNER TRUTH, “ADDRESS AT THE WOMAN’S
RIGHTS CONVENTION IN AKRON, OHIO,” (29 MAY 1851)
Michael Phillips‐Anderson
Monmouth University
Abstract: Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech in Akron, commonly titled “Ain’t I a
Woman,” stands as a landmark in the fight for racial and woman’s equality. Truth
spoke before a woman’s rights convention, making arguments about women’s
physical and intellectual capacities, as well as religious arguments in support of
equal rights. While it is clear that she asserted her identity as a woman and a
citizen in this speech, our understanding of her words is complicated by the lack
of an authentic text of her remarks. This essay explores the challenges in
recovering Truth’s rhetoric and offers an analysis of her arguments for equal
rights.
Keywords: Sojourner Truth, Identity, Textual Authenticity, Civil Rights, Feminism
The Declaration of Sentiments adopted at the 1848 Woman’s Rights Convention in
Seneca Falls, New York called for “a series of Conventions” that would continue the reform
efforts across “every part of the country.”1 In response to that call, a Woman’s Rights
Convention met in Akron, Ohio on May 28 and 29, 1851. The convention featured a number of
women speaking in defense of their rights and calling for moral change and legal reform.
Sojourner Truth participated in the convention and spoke on the second day.2 She was the only
woman speaking at the convention who had been held in slavery. In her speech, Truth argued
forcefully for the rights of women, drawing particular attention to the position of women of
color in the social and legal hierarchy of her time.
What Truth said that day is the subject of much debate.3 The speech Truth delivered at
the Akron convention is today commonly titled “Ain’t I a woman?” However, the contraction
appears in different versions of the speech as: “Ar’n’t ,” “A’n’t,” and “Ain’t.”4 Marius Robinson
published a version of the speech in the Salem, Ohio Anti‐Slavery Bugle in 1851.5 This version
was written in standard English and represents the first supposedly complete text of the
speech. In 1863, Frances Dana Gage produced the most widely known version of the speech in
a southern black dialect,6 and others, including rhetorical critic Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, have
edited Gage’s text into standard English.7 In 1850, Truth published an account of her life, the
Narrative of Sojourner Truth, and a later edition of that memoir included a copy of the Gage
version of the Akron speech.8 There are several questions to consider in determining the most
authentic version of the speech. How do the words ascribed to Truth vary among the versions?
What are the differences in the accounts of the context of the Akron convention? What written
version best captures the quality of Truth’s delivery, particularly the accuracy of what scholars
call “eye dialectal” indicators?9 What were each writer’s motivations in constructing the
different versions of the speech, and how are those differing motivations reflected in the texts?
Michael Phillips‐Anderson: mphillip@monmouth.edu
Last Updated: August 2013
Copyright © 2013 (Michael Phillips‐Anderson).
Voices of Democracy, ISSN #1932‐9539. Available at http://www.voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/.
Voices of Democracy 7 (2012): 21‐46
Phillips‐Anderson 22
There are several reasons why it is important to establish an authentic version of Truth’s
Akron speech. Despite excellent biographies of Sojourner Truth that address the controversies
surrounding the various versions of the speech,10 many encyclopedias, anthologies, and
scholars continue to use the Robinson or Gage texts, sometimes in expurgated form and often
without indication of the source or an interrogation of its authenticity.11 Public interest in the
speech likely leads readers to one of the multiple versions found online, and these texts often
appear without attribution or contextualization.12 When discussing the role of archival research
in studying female orators, Susan Zaeske and Sarah Jedd note the questionable authenticity of
many speeches found on the Internet, and they cite Truth’s Akron speech as a good example of
the problem.13
In this essay, I argue that the Robinson text of Truth’s 1851 Akron speech is the most
valuable for readers interested in Truth’s rhetorical strategies. Robinson’s version of the speech
and his description of the context are most consistent with the historical evidence. Gage’s text,
while preferred by some scholars, is, in some regards, inconsistent with that historical and
linguistic evidence. Each text depicted a very different Sojourner Truth. In the Robinson text,
Truth came across as brave, confident, and witty. In the Gage and Campbell texts, essential
features of her lived experience were masked by linguistic errors and historical inaccuracies.
This created a Sojourner Truth who appeared less skilled as an orator and less confident of her
own agency. The popularity of the Gage text has thus minimized Truth’s rhetorical power and
legacy. If we are to assess the rhetoric of one of the nineteenth century’s great voices for
freedom, we must consider Truth’s rhetoric based on the best available evidence.
The first section of this essay provides a brief biography of Sojourner Truth from her 30
years of slavery to her career as a professional speaker on the antislavery lecture tour. The
second section explains how we came to have conflicting versions of the Akron speech, and it
outlines the differences among them. In the third section of the essay, I discuss the rhetorical
and historical authenticity of the various texts of the speech, showing how Gage’s version is not
supported by contemporaneous evidence. Fourth, I analyze Truth’s rhetoric as represented in
the Robinson text, including her claim for equality based on her tripartite division of humanity
into body, mind, and spirit. The final section considers the legacy of Truth’s rhetoric and the
implications of assessing her rhetoric based on the differing texts of her most famous speech.
Sojourner Truth’s Life
The woman who would come to be called Sojourner Truth was born around 1797 in
Ulster County, New York. Truth’s given slave name was Isabella.14 Nell Irvin Painter identified
three significant time periods in Truth’s life: “slavery, evangelism, and antislavery feminism.”15
Her first spoken language was Dutch, yet she learned to speak English around the age of ten—
albeit with a decidedly Dutch accent.16 Her language skills were typical of those in Isabella’s
region, where slaves in New York and New Jersey not uncommonly “spoke good English and
Dutch,” a legacy dating back to at least the 1740s.17 Truth never learned to read or write and
had no formal religious training, other than learning from her mother how to recite the Lord’s
Prayer in Dutch.18
During her first 30 years of life, Isabella remained in slavery under six different owners.
She would give birth to five children during this time.19 In 1817, New York passed a law
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Phillips‐Anderson 23
requiring that all slaves born before 1799 be set free on July 4, 1827. Isabella’s fifth owner, John
J. Dumont, promised he would release her one year early. When the time came, however,
Dumont broke his promise, claiming that Isabella still owed him additional work because of an
injury that he claimed had affected her productivity. Finding this decision unacceptable, Isabella
took her youngest child and left in the fall of 1826.20 She escaped to the van Wagenen’s home
five miles away. The van Wagenens opposed slavery and paid Dumont for the freedom of both
Isabella and her daughter.21
Following her emancipation, Isabella moved to New York City where she worked as a
housekeeper and cook. During this time she continued to develop her strong religious beliefs
and subsequently joined two churches—first a Methodist church, and later an African church.
She was also part of several religious movements of the time, including perfectionism (an
offshoot of Methodism practiced in homes instead of churches), the Kingdom of Matthias (led
by Robert Matthews who believed himself to be the Prophet Matthias and Jesus Christ), and
Millerism (William Miller predicted the second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of the world
in 1843).22 When not living in the homes of her employers, Isabella settled in several different
religious communities. Regardless of the form her religious practice took, Isabella maintained
that she had a direct connection to the Holy Spirit and was unwavering in her devotion to
Jesus.23
Isabella’s participation in Millerism and her belief that the world was coming to an end
likely contributed to her decision to leave domestic employment in New York and set out on a
new course with a new name. Just before leaving New York on June 1, 1843, she informed the
woman she was working for that “her name was no longer Isabella, but, SOJOURNER; and that
she was going east.” When the woman asked why she was going east, Truth replied: “The Spirit
calls me there, and I must go.'”24 Truth believed that she had been called to lecture, “‘testifying
of the hope that was in her’—exhorting the people to embrace Jesus, and refrain from sin.”25
Her new first name represented her transient life and her plan to travel around the country to
preach. Sojourner was a wanderer, spending time in different places, but not making any of
them her home. Her choice of “Truth” as a surname, on the other hand, reflected her total faith
in God and the Holy Spirit who spoke to her.
In 1850, Truth published the Narrative of Sojourner Truth, which she sold at her public
appearances as her primary means of support. The Narrative was a historical and dramatic
literary creation based on conversations between Truth and her friend Olive Gilbert. Later
editions featured an addendum—the Book of Life—which reproduced correspondence and
newspaper articles about Truth, including Gage’s text of the Akron speech.26 Truth joined the
antislavery lecture circuit, traveled around the country, and spoke before meetings on
abolition, woman’s rights, and religion.27 According to an account in the Democrat and
Chronicle: “Her appearance reminds one vividly of Dinah in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ A white
handkerchief was tied closely about her head and she wore spectacles, but this was the only
indication of her extreme age. Her voice is strong, has no touch of shrillness, and she walked
about as hale and hearty as a person of half her years.”28 While she was not alone in her quest
to bring about change, Truth was often the only black female to speak at these events.29 As she
spoke about abolition and woman’s rights she addressed audiences that were often mixed in
their disposition toward her beliefs and her participation in the events.
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Phillips‐Anderson 24
While on a speaking tour through Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio in
the spring of 1851, Truth visited the home of Marius and Emily Robinson in Salem, Ohio.30 In
March of that year, the Robinsons’ newspaper, Anti‐Slavery Bugle,31 advertised a women’s
rights convention to be held in Akron. The call asked for the attendance of “all the friends of
Reform, in whatever department engaged, we say—Come, give us your presence and counsel . .
. . Slavery, political and personal, will crush humanity.”32 It was there that Sojourner Truth
would deliver her famous address that is the subject of this essay. Following the Akron
convention, Truth spoke at abolition and woman’s rights meetings throughout the country. Her
religious practice embraced the spiritualism of the 1850s, leading her to finally settle in a
religious community near Battle Creek, Michigan. Truth’s activism continued in speeches to the
New York City Anti‐Slavery Society and the American Equal Rights Association. Following the
start of the Civil War, Truth became an outspoken advocate for the Union even before the
abolition of slavery was clearly stated as a goal of the war. Truth met many of the notable
people of her time, including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Presidents Abraham
Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant. Following the Civil War, Truth turned her
attention to two main causes, universal suffrage and black resettlement in the west. Truth’s
rhetorical efforts for these causes focused on the economic benefits of equality and highlighted
the profound inequalities for black women. She remained politically active into the 1880s,
despite several premature reports of her passing. Sojourner Truth died at her home in Battle
Creek, Michigan on November 26, 1883.
Sojourner Truth’s Speech at Akron
The second annual meeting of the Ohio Woman’s Rights Convention was well‐advertised
and attracted hundreds of women and men to the Universalist Church in Akron on May 28‐29,
1851.33 Frances Dana Gage, an activist in the abolition and woman’s rights movements, as well
as a poet and novelist, presided over the convention. Also in attendance were Jane Swisshelm,
editor of the Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter, Marius and Emily Robinson of the Salem Anti‐Slavery
Bugle, and Emma Coe, a prominent woman’s rights speaker. The proceedings of the convention
did not indicate what Sojourner Truth said but simply noted that “remarks upon the subject of
the education and condition of women were made by Mrs. Coe, Sojourner Truth and Rev. Geo.
Schlosser and Ms. Coates.”34 There are many published versions of what Truth may have said
that day, but three versions of the speech are of particular interest here, including ones
prepared by Truth’s contemporaries, Robinson and Gage, as well as a more recent version
edited by Campbell.35
Robinson Text (1851)
The oldest account of Truth’s speech that provides more than a passing mention of it
was published by Marius Robinson on June 21, 1851 in the Salem Anti‐Slavery Bugle. The article
contained a brief introduction followed by a text of Truth’s speech. Although the introduction
to the article is unsigned, it was likely prepared by Robinson, who served as one of three official
secretaries of the convention.36 Robinson’s version was not the first published account of the
Akron speech, but rather the first attempt to convey what Truth said in full.37 Robinson
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acknowledged that “it is impossible to transfer to paper, or convey any adequate idea of the
effect produced upon the audience.”38 In recording the speech, Robinson took literary license in
deciding to report Truth’s speech in standard English with no dialectal indicators. In this version,
Truth declared “I am a woman’s rights” (1). She used biblical evidence and personal experience
to support her claim for equality between the sexes. Notably absent from this version is any
form of the question, ” Ain’t I a woman?” Nor does this version include any mention of a
contentious atmosphere at the convention.39
Gage Text (1863)
The most common rendering of Truth’s speech—the one that introduced the famous
phrase “Ar’n’t I a woman?”—was constructed nearly twelve years after the Akron conference
by Frances Dana Gage. Her version first appeared in the New York Independent on April 23,
1863, was reprinted in the National Anti‐Slavery Standard on May 2, 1863, and also appeared,
slightly revised, in the Narrative of Sojourner Truth and the History of Woman Suffrage.40 None
of the three later versions credited Gage’s original version in the Independent, and two omitted
Gage’s admission that her version had “given but a faint sketch” of Truth’s speech.41 In her
article, Gage set the scene of the convention as one of confrontation with opponents of
abolition and woman’s rights. Following her introduction, Gage included a text of Truth’s
speech interspersed with reporting of the audience’s reactions. Gage’s version of Truth’s speech
was little noticed at the time, possibly because it was eclipsed by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
article about Truth published in the April 1863 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.42
There are three main features of the Gage text that distinguish it from Robinson’s 1851
version. First, Gage provided some context for Truth’s speech, describing the confrontational
atmosphere at the convention. Second, Gage wrote the text in a nineteenth‐century southern
black dialect. And third, she included the famous question, “Ar’n’t I a woman?” (1). The
question appeared four times in the Gage text, following arguments about work, food, physical
and emotional pain, and righteousness. Gage reported that after Truth delivered her speech,
the crowd gathered around her, applauded, and shook her hand. It is this version of the speech
that has been reproduced numerous times, though often with changes and omissions.43
Campbell Text (1989)
The third text of Truth’s speech is a version of the Gage text edited by Karlyn Kohrs
Campbell. It represents a non‐dialectal version of the Gage text that appeared in the Narrative
of Sojourner Truth.44 Campbell authored several articles about Truth’s Akron speech, and she
has directly addressed the authenticity and dialectal variations of the available texts.45
Conceding that “there survives only a partial text of [Truth’s] most famous speech,” Campbell
suggests that we must be satisfied with “incomplete” stenographic reports of Truth’s
“spontaneous utterances.”46 Campbell’s text basically follows Gage’s version, except that she
“removed purely dialectical indicators.”47 There are three clear difficulties with Campbell’s
version of Truth’s speech: A standard English version of the speech existed from the time
period; it is not common for scholars to rewrite historical texts into modern versions in the
same language; and Campbell did not explain her methodology for making editorial choices.
Campbell cited the 1878 edition of the Narrative as the source for the speech text in her
1986 and 1989 works. Writers in Gage’s time did not typically render non‐standard English
Voices of Democracy 7 (2012): 21‐46
Phillips‐Anderson 26
speech in dialect, aside from that of African Americans,48 and Campbell herself has noted “the
failure to record the words of women is an example of women’s recurring loss of historical
agency.”49 Although Robinson’s version was not widely known at the time, rewriting the speech
seems to be a drastic step within a piece of scholarship that purports to investigate the style
and content of an important speech by an early African‐American feminist.
The third issue with the Campbell text is that she did not articulate a methodology for
the editorial choices or even indicate which words she elected to change.50 Among the
significant changes Campbell appears to have made, however, were the terminological change
of “niggers” to “Negroes” and numerous more minor dialectal changes (e.g., “tink dat” to “think
that”).51 As for the famous question of the speech, Gage used “ar’n’t,” which Campbell
translated as “ain’t” in one version and “aren’t” in another.52 Even if “ain’t” was the proper
grammatical form of the time, as Campbell claimed,53 why change it to “aren’t” when other
anachronisms (such as “‘twixt”) remain unaltered in the text?54 In a 2005 article, Campbell
acknowledged the questionable authenticity of the text in Man Cannot Speak for Her and
returned to Gage’s unexpurgated text from History of Woman Suffrage, noting that she wanted
readers to experience “what it must have been like to hear Truth speak.”55
Authenticity and Truth’s Akron Speech
There is no clear agreement among scholars as to which text of Truth’s 1851 Akron
speech should be viewed as the most authentic version. Not only is it uncertain what Truth said
that day, it is similarly unclear what sorts of conditions she encountered when delivering the
speech. An examination of the reports from Akron indicates four areas of disagreement. First,
did the speakers at the Akron convention experience vocal opposition from opponents of
women’s rights? Second, did the supporters of woman’s rights object to a black speaker during
the convention? Third, which version of Truth’s speech most closely captured the sound of
Truth’s voice? Finally, were the stylistic features of Truth’s Akron speech consistent with reports
of her other public discourse? In the following section, I argue that, for both rhetorical and
temporal reasons, these questions are best answered with reference to the Robinson text.
Vocal Opposition at Akron
Gage offered various accounts of the events surrounding Truth’s speech. In 1853, Gage
reported to the National Women’s Rights Convention that even though some people opposed
their cause at previous meetings and were invited to voice those objections, “no one has had a
word to say against us at the time.”56 In the 1863 version, however, Gage recounted a tense
scene in Akron, with opposing speakers and clergy shouting at the attendees and offering
arguments against equality. Gage reported that a minister “claimed superior rights and
privileges for man because of superior intellect; another because of the manhood of Christ.”57
She elaborated that other clergy also made arguments against woman’s rights, while “boys in
the galleries and sneerers among the pews were enjoying hugely the discomfiture, as they
supposed, of the strong‐minded.”58
Questions surrounding the context for Truth’s speech are not limited to the alleged
opposition to woman’s rights. Questions also surround the opposition among woman’s right
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supporters to a black speaker at their convention. Many of the convention participants listed in
the Proceedings were supporters of both woman’s rights and abolition,59 and the call for a
woman’s rights convention appeared in an antislavery newspaper, suggesting some overlap
between the causes.60 Still, black speakers often had difficulty advocating for reform causes.
Although white women orators faced hostility in the antebellum period, they generally risked
less in terms of their personal and economic stability than black women speakers.61 According
to Gage, when Truth rose to speak there was some disruption, but “the “tumult subsided at
once”62 when she asked the audience to allow Truth to speak. This framing of the convention
placed Gage at the center of controversy and cast her as the brave proponent of racial equality.
Gage’s account of a hostile reception is supported by at least three sources: The History
of Woman Suffrage, Sallie Holley, and Hannah Tracey Cutler. Yet these sources are either
unreliable, contradicted by other accounts, or not clearly independent of Gage’s influence. The
History of Woman Suffrage explicitly used Gage as the sole source for its report, and the
inclusion of Truth’s Akron speech in the History of Woman Suffrage helped to form Truth’s
legacy.63 Lisa Shawn Hogan has argued that the History of Woman Suffrage devoted
considerable attention to controversial women who stood up to significant opposition. This
framing of the history may help explain why they chose to use Frances Gage’s account of the
Akron speech.64
In a book about activist Sallie Holley’s experiences at the Akron convention, John White
Chadwick likewise suggested that there was an atmosphere of confrontation. Chadwick wrote:
“They went to Akron to a Woman’s Rights convention meeting there, and heard Aunt Fanny
Gage, Sojourner Truth, Caroline M. Severance, and other champions of the faith, and were
vastly entertained, especially by Sojourner’s discomfiture and rout of a young preacher who
had the temerity to come up against her.”65 Again, however, the credibility of this source is in
doubt given the second‐hand reporting and its temporal distance from its subject. Yet this
source, like the History of Woman Suffrage, has been used to support the authenticity of Gage’s
account.66
The third source that presumably supports Gage’s account came from Hannah Tracy
Cutler, a friend of Gage’s and, like Robinson, a secretary of the Akron convention. Cutler was
credited with two conflicting accounts of the convention. The first, in 1851, reported that Cutler
thanked “the citizens of Akron for their hospitality in receiving the delegates . . . and for so
kindly and respectfully attending upon their deliberations.”67 Cutler wrote a somewhat
different account of the Akron convention in The Woman’s Journal in 1896, however.68 In that
account she said that the audience was mixed in its support for woman’s rights, and that “Our
opponents claimed the rights of free speech, and hurled the apostle Paul at our heads with
great violence.”69 In the article, Cutler did not mention that Truth gave a formal speech but
commented on two of her retorts to clergy. She also mentioned that Truth spoke at an informal
meeting the day after the convention and recalled Truth saying that she “never found any men
ready to carry her over the mud puddles,” and that “she could do as big a days’ work as any
man, and eat as much, too, if she could get it.”70 This phrasing was quite similar to Gage’s
version of Truth’s speech, of course, but Cutler’s account of the convention differs significantly
from Gage’s report and cannot be taken as confirmation of the authenticity of her friend’s
version of the speech.71
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The Robinson version depicted a peaceful context for the speech that is better
supported by contemporaneous evidence. The Proceedings of the convention made no mention
of vocal opposition.72 Robinson wrote: “We must add that the citizens of Akron by their
urbanity and generous hospitality, have secured for themselves a lasting place in the hearts of
the numerous visitors present on the occasion.”73 It is true that opponents of woman’s rights
and abolition often directed their hostility at convention speakers, but there is no conclusive
evidence that such hostility erupted at the Akron convention. In the Robinson version, Truth did
not single out any specific opponent in attendance. In addition, newspapers often recorded
disruptions when Truth spoke in other occasions, yet these same newspapers did not report
similar disruptions at Akron.74 The lack of contemporaneous evidence of opposition at Akron is
likely because there was none, not because reporters omitted to mention such details. The
conclusion best supported by the historical evidence is that the 1851 Woman’s Rights
Convention in Akron was a peaceful gathering at which women and men spoke in favor of
woman’s rights before a friendly or, at worst, a quietly oppositional audience.
The Sound of Truth
In addition to issuing conflicting reports about the context for Truth’s speech, Robinson
and Gage remembered Truth’s voice very differently.75 Both Robinson and Gage acknowledged
that the texts they produced were not word for word transcriptions of Truth’s performance. In
examining the language of the speech, I pay particular attention to two features: First, the
reporting of the speech in dialect and, second, the authenticity of the question, “Ar’n’t I a
woman?” The issue of Truth’s spoken language is significant in that it informs our
understanding of her ethos and her persuasive effect, while the veracity of the “Ar’n’t I a
woman?” refrain speaks to Truth’s rhetorical strategies.
The sound of Truth’s voice was not likely captured accurately by Gage’s dialectal
rendering. The New York Tribune observed that “Mrs. Truth, in consequence of her unhappy
situation in early life, is totally uneducated, but speaks very fluently in tolerably correct and
certainly very forcible style.”76 And there is evidence that Truth did not approve the printing of
her speeches in dialect.77 An 1879 newspaper article from the Kalamazoo Daily Telegraph
reported that:
Sojourner also prides herself on a fairly correct English, which is in all senses a foreign
tongue to her, she having spent her early years among people speaking “Low Dutch.”
People who report her often exaggerate her expressions, putting into her mouth the
most marked southern dialect, which Sojourner feels is rather taking an unfair
advantage of her.78
That Truth did not write out her own speeches complicates the authenticity debate.
Suzanne Pullon Fitch and Roseann M. Mandzuik observed that as someone who was denied an
education and could not read nor write, “Truth had to rely on others taking down her thoughts
as she presented them in public. What is available is a collection of partial transcriptions and
reports that often are a combination of the words of the reporter and Truth.”79 This is a
problem evident in her Narrative. While Truth did agree to its publication and sold it as her
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primary means of support, her very illiteracy made it impossible for her to give fully informed
consent to the language used in the book or any other accounting of her words.
Even if we do not have an authoritative version of the speech, we can make some
informed assumptions about the sound of Truth’s voice. Although there is little in the historical
record that attempts to transcribe the sound of black New York English‐Dutch language
patterns, one of the few attempts comes from a travelogue composed by Dr. Alexander
Hamilton in 1744. Hamilton reports that his enslaved driver, Dromo, who spoke an eighteenth‐
century southern black English dialect, tried but largely failed to communicate with a black
woman in New York who spoke in a Dutch‐English hybrid.80 It cannot be known whether
Sojourner Truth’s speech sounded the same as the woman’s, but the report offers insight into
those with a similar dialect from a similar location some fifty years prior to Truth’s birth.
Of particular concern is the legitimacy of the famous question: “Ar’n’t I a woman?” The
basic meaning of the question did not first appear in Gage’s report about Akron. Evidence
existed that variations of the phrase were much more historical. According to Carlton Mabee
and Susan Mabee Newhouse:
The motto ‘Am I not a Woman and a Sister?’ was a reversed sex version of the motto,
‘Am I not a Man and a Brother?’ which was used as early as 1787 in Britain by the
Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The motto ‘Am I not a Woman and a Sister?’
appeared in 1832, along with a picture of a female slave in chains, as the heading of the
Boston Liberator’s Ladies Department.81
Maria Stewart, who helped pave the way for African‐American female speakers, also reportedly
asked during an 1833 speech: “What if I am a woman?”82 In Gage’s version of the Akron speech,
Truth was reported to have said:
Dat man ober dar say dat woman needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over
ditches, and to have de best place eberywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or
ober mud‐puddles, or gives me any best place; And ar’n’t 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 ar’n’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man, (when I
could get it,) and bear de lash as well—and ar’n’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen
chillen, and seen ’em mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s
grief, none, but Jesus heard—and ar’n’t I a woman? (1)
There are several features of this rendering of the speech that raise questions about its
authenticity. All sources, other than Gage, lack anything similar to the repetition of the question
“Ar’n’t I a woman?” It seems unlikely that if Truth asked the question repeatedly, other versions
would have left out such an important structural and stylistic component. Mabee and Mabee
Newhouse, in an examination of available reports of Truth’s other speeches, found that she was
“not given to such rhythmic repetition. On the other hand, an examination of Gage’s speeches
and writings indicates that Gage was indeed given to it.”83 Truth’s statement about her children
in the Gage version similarly lacks corroboration. Gage claimed that Sojourner Truth said she
had thirteen children, most of whom were sold into slavery. Yet, the Narrative indicated that
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Phillips‐Anderson 30
Truth had only five children.84 Her son Peter was sold away, but Truth was able to challenge
that in court, winning him back in 1828.85 The Gage text treats Truth as powerless rather than
as someone who was able to have remarkable success in challenging the injustices she
confronted.
Superiority of the Robinson Version
I contend that the version of the Akron speech published by Marius Robinson in 1851 is
the more authentic version of Truth’s speech. Robinson’s text should be preferred on the basis
of corroborating reports on the setting at Akron and in relation to the content and dialect of
Truth’s performance. Among the sources that reported a peaceful convention are the Cleveland
Daily True Democrat,86 the Boston Liberator,87 The Cleveland Herald,88 and Gage’s earliest
account of Akron.89 There are no credible accounts that support Gage’s claim that Truth faced
open hostility at Akron.90
On the issue of the content and language of Truth’s speech, the Robinson text offered a
fuller treatment of the speech than any other published in 1851. The article in the New York
Tribune included every significant argument made in the Robinson version.91 The primary
difference is that, predictably, the Tribune’s version was reported in the third person, while
Robinson’s version featured Truth speaking in first‐person voice. Robinson’s version, for
example, quoted Truth as declaring, “I am a woman’s rights” (1), whereas the New York Tribune
reported: “She said she was a woman.”92 While the two reports do not feature identical words,
they both claim that Truth made a declarative statement about her gender and did so in non‐
dialectal English. No other extant account of the speech supports Gage’s report of the repeated
question: “Ar’n’t I a woman?” Nor do they support Gage’s rendition of Truth’s delivery in
dialect.
The larger point of this essay is that Gage’s text should not be treated as an
authoritative rendering of Truth’s speech. If the reader is most concerned with how others have
constructed Sojourner Truth’s image, then Gage’s words are all important. Most expurgated
versions of Truth’s speech also rely upon Gage, but those miss the essential character of the
work, even as Gage presented it. If our purpose is to appreciate Truth’s rhetorical skills,
however, the Gage text may lead us to erroneous conclusions about Truth’s agency and esteem
as a speaker.93 For these purposes, Robinson’s version is more reliable. We simply cannot know
for certain what Sojourner Truth said that day, but we can reasonably be sure that it was not
what Gage reported. Far too much time passed between the delivery of the speech and Gage’s
recording of her ideas to make that version credible. Given that the only other substantial text
is Robinson’s—and given that the authenticity of that version is supported by evidence of the
day—the analysis that follows will rely upon the Robinson text.
Truth’s Rhetorical Power
The main purpose of Truth’s speech was to advocate for woman’s rights from the
perspective of a woman of color. She referred to her experiences in slavery and as a still
oppressed free woman. Yet her comments were mainly concerned with issues of gender
equality. Fitch and Mandzuik observed that “this speech is important because it brings together
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the two causes for which Truth spent her life’s work, antislavery and women’s rights.”94 Based
on arguments about body, mind, and spirit, she claimed that women should be accorded the
same rights as men. In the first section of the speech, Truth argued that women were physically
equal to men. In the middle section, Truth argued that women should have rights reflecting
their intellectual capacities. In the third section, Truth used biblical arguments in support of civil
rights for women. Throughout, Truth employed her experience, knowledge, and deft humor to
articulate her argument for equality.
Truth began her speech with a bold assertion of her womanhood. She declared: “I am a
woman’s rights” (1). The syntax was a bit unusual, but this is perhaps an even more powerful
rhetorical figure than the famed question “Ar’n’t I a woman?” Instead of asking the audience to
confirm her gender, she made the stronger declarative statement through the personal
embodiment of her cause. With her statement, “I am a woman’s rights,” Truth positioned
herself as a physical, intellectual, and religious embodiment of her cause. This statement
forecasted the three argumentative sections of the speech. Throughout the speech, Truth’s
arguments were in the form of retorts to anticipated objections, a rhetorical strategy classically
called procatalepsis.
Beginning with an embodied argument for equality, Truth first argued that the value of
the body was to be found in the work it can do. She said, “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?” (1). The work she discussed was the physical
work in the fields and the products of her labor. She claimed that “I can carry as much as any
man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it” (1). What is striking about this depiction of her
physical role in agricultural life is that it subverted notions of femininity at the time. Notice that
Truth argued that she could gather and consume as much food as a man, but did not mention
the domestic task of preparing the food. Painter observed that Truth’s “experience as a worker
validates her claim, and the work in question, as well as the criterion for equality—muscular
strength—are masculine. She does not mention her household work.”95 Truth’s argument
challenged the prevailing concepts of chivalry and women’s fragility employed by those working
against woman’s rights and even by some privileged female supporters. Nancy Isenberg argued
that the construct of chivalry “accentuated physical prowess and bodily strength as the
distinguishing mark of civil capacity.”96 Chivalry gave agency in the public sphere to white men
only. Non‐white men were presumed to lack the moral fortitude to protect their countries or
their families, and the female body was viewed as “an object of conquest.”97 As with so many
arguments of the time, chivalry doubly impacted Truth as a woman of African descent.
Truth also challenged those in the woman’s rights cause who would separate their
movement from abolition. Jacqueline Bacon offered an analysis of Truth’s speech, finding that
“Truth exposes the hypocrisy of white antebellum society, which represents white women as
inviolate while sanctioning physical labor for oppressed slave women whose experience is
ignored in definitions of femininity.”98 As the above quotations show, Truth used her
experience to advocate for women who enjoyed no such privilege. Many white activists
invoked the cult of domesticity or true womanhood in their arguments for equality, portraying
women as worthy of rights but not of work.99 Truth argued instead that if work were required
for equal rights, then women like her had earned their equality.
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Following her physical justifications for equality, Truth turned to claims based on
intelligence. Through her shrewd use of analogy and humor, Truth took on the belief that
women were intellectually inferior to men. She asked, “As for intellect, all I can say is, if a
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” (1). The New York Tribune reported that the audience responded with “roars of
laughter.”100 Truth demonstrated that her intellect was equal to that of a man’s, not by denying
the offending claim, but by subverting it. She ironically accepted her opponents’ claim through
the use of an analogy of measurement (demonstrating knowledge) and comically reassured her
audience that since women lack intellectual capacity, men had no need to fear them. By turning
the hypothetical argument around, Truth showed that she was smarter than those who
opposed equality on the basis of intellectual capacity.
Truth’s humor represented a good strategic choice. Fitch and Mandzuik observed that
Truth “often used herself to show the comic results of ignorance grown out of slavery.”101
Humor can serve several strategic functions (e.g., to display cleverness, to win the admiration
of the audience, to deflect criticism),102 but the comic frame can also serve to soften the edge
of the speaker’s anger or hostility toward his or her opponents. In the nineteenth century,
women who employed humor generally did so in print rather that in public speeches,103 but
Truth made it a central feature of her rhetorical strategy in the Akron speech. Offering advice
laced with humor, she sarcastically portrayed opponents of equality as merely confused: “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” (1). By pretending to be concerned with how the men who opposed
equality felt, she more subtly made the point that opposition to gender equality was rooted in
ignorance.104
Having countered the intellectual objections, Truth left behind her comic persona and
engaged the contentious biblical arguments against woman’s rights. Truth employed four
biblical examples as evidence in this section: The condemnation of Eve; Jesus’ attitudes toward
women; the role of women in the resurrection of Lazarus; and the role of Mary in the biblical
story of Jesus (1).105 Ellen Carol DuBois argued that “almost until the Civil War, conflict with
clerical authority was the most important issue in the women’s rights movement.”106 Truth
began her defense of a woman’s connection to God by demonstrating that her lack of
education had not dulled her faith. She said: “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” (1). Truth’s point was that her inability to read resulted
from her lack of educational opportunities rather than a lack of intellect.107 She made clear
from her statement that she may not be able to read the Bible, but she had heard its words.
The metaphor of setting the world right side up connected Truth’s religious claims with her
earlier arguments about women having the physical and spiritual strength to correct the
problems of the past. Equality was necessary to give them a chance to use both their physical
and their spiritual strengths in full measure.
Truth also cited evidence that Jesus responded to the pleas and arguments of women
and did not deny their equal humanity. Her argument that Jesus valued the ideas of women
countered those who used the Bible to argue against women’s equality. In addition, Truth
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turned to the story of Lazarus for further support that the Bible did not support the subjugation
of women: “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” (1).108 Truth’s use of this
story served two purposes. First, she demonstrated that great change could result from the
efforts of women. It was not Lazarus who asked to be healed when he was ill. It was Mary and
Martha who sought Jesus’ help before and after Lazarus’s death. With this story, Truth
suggested that women’s voices could be powerful enough to bring about miracles.
The differing actions of Martha and Mary in this story illustrated one of Truth’s key
arguments: that women of all sorts were needed to affect change. The Bible recounted the
story in the following way. When Jesus arrived in Bethany, Martha went directly to speak to
him, while Mary remained at home. Martha told him, “if thou hadst been here, my brother had
not died.”109 Jesus responded that he could do something now, even if he was late in arriving.110
Martha then went to Mary to say that Jesus wanted to see her. Mary repeated Martha’s
argument to Jesus: “if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.”111 But unlike Martha,
Mary wept as she said this. The response, “Jesus wept,” is the shortest verse in the King James
Bible and the only one that Truth quoted directly in the Akron speech.112 Jesus then went to the
grave and raised Lazarus from the dead. It was the persuasive combination of reason and
emotion—and the combination of the aggressiveness of Martha with the reticence of Mary—
that brought about the desired result. Truth used the same strategies in her speech, offering
arguments based on both reason and emotion. The story of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus
illustrated the need for all sorts of women to get involved in the fight for equality, whether as
leaders of the movement or as more passive supporters. Like the resurrection of Lazarus,
change would not come without the intercession of all types of women.
Truth addressed the legacy not only of the first biblical woman, but also of the woman
who brought forth Jesus into the world. Arguing against the idea that women did not deserve
equal rights because Jesus was a man, Truth asked, “And how came Jesus into the world?
Through God who created him and woman who bore him. Man, where is your part?” (1). Again,
Truth displayed humor and wisdom in emphasizing the role of a woman in the story of Jesus.
Concerning Truth’s argument about the origin of Jesus, Bacon observed that “Truth does not
refer to Mary but to ‘a woman,’ a semantic choice to universalize women’s role in Christianity.
Mary’s central role in Christ’s presence on earth is not just a part of a particular narrative but a
sign of women’s personal connection to Jesus.”113 Through these examples and counter‐
arguments, Truth established that her knowledge and intellect were at least on par with those
of her audience. Her embodiment of a strong body, quick mind, and pious spirit made a
powerful claim for the equality of the races and the sexes.
Truth concluded her speech by summing up the challenges facing men from both the
abolition and woman’s rights movements. In the final sentences of the speech, she observed,
“But the women are coming up blessed by 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” (1). The metaphor of the hawk and buzzard represented a
dilemma that could lead to paralysis and was common to the era.114 In Truth’s speech, it
functioned to suggest how white men were caught between demands for equality from both
blacks and women and needed to respond. Perhaps Truth thought her persuasive abilities could
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help them respond positively to both movements. As a symbol of both abolitionism and the
woman’s rights movement, Truth was concerned about freedom for her race, but she also was
part of the movement for gender equality. As a voice for both movements, Truth rightly saw
entrenched privilege as their common foe. With the concluding statement of her speech, Truth
again used humor to show the audience that she understood the defensiveness of those
opposed to both racial and gender equality, but that she was also confident of victory.
Conclusion
This critical analysis was designed to shed light on the controversies surrounding the
authenticity of various versions of Sojourner Truth’s famous speech in Akron. Focusing on
Robinson’s text, it suggests how Truth used her considerable rhetorical skill to advocate for
equal citizenship. As Lindal Buchanan has argued, Gage’s text, “although historically unreliable,”
provides insight into “the setting and substance of Truth’s address that long ago day in 1851”
and is “largely responsible for the former slave’s place in our cultural memory.”115 It helps us to
understand the prevailing image of Sojourner Truth and the source of the famous question
attributed to her, “Ar’n’t I a woman?”. Yet as Shirley Wilson Logan has argued, a more complete
understanding of Truth and her place in the history of the struggle for racial and gender
equality requires that we consider multiple versions of that famous speech in Akron.116 An
understanding based solely on the Gage text may serve to reinscribe the classism and racism of
the first wave of feminism by caricaturing one of its few well‐known black speakers. Rosalyn
Terborg‐Penn wondered why the white suffragists “seemed to find an illiterate Black woman
more compatible than the several educated ones in the universal suffrage movement. Could it
be that whites felt they could not manipulate the voices of literate Black women as easily as
they could the voice of one who could not read?”117
Marius Robinson’s version of Truth’s speech gave the world a Sojourner Truth who was
in full command of argument, language, and her audience. She used her position as the only
woman of color to speak at the Akron convention to remind her audience that she brought
together their support for both woman’s rights and abolition. Truth demanded her full rights as
a citizen—as a woman and as a person of color. Her speech challenged those who supported
gender equality to recognize that abolition was only the beginning.
Sojourner Truth exists today in a bifurcated way. As Painter argued, Truth was both a
real person and a symbol.118 Both her real struggle and the symbolism of her memory should be
kept in mind as we consider her legacy. The seeming preference for the Gage version of Truth’s
speech at Akron speaks to “the role of symbol in our public life and to our need for this
symbol.”119 Truth’s struggle to establish her identity is mirrored in the efforts by others to
control it. The very complexity of unpacking Truth’s history reflects the challenges she faced in
establishing her own identity. Her struggle to define herself as a person, a woman, a woman of
color, and a citizen did not end with her speech in Akron. Throughout her life, she fought
against a society that found it normal to think of her as less than human, and even her
supporters competed to define her identity for her. Sojourner Truth’s bold declaration of her
own identity serves as an important reminder that the struggle for equality is a difficult and
ongoing rhetorical process within a democratic society.
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Phillips‐Anderson 35
Author’s Note: Michael Phillips‐Anderson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Communication at Monmouth University. He wishes to thank Shawn Parry‐Giles, J. Michael
Hogan, and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful guidance and Corinne Nyquist at the
Sojourner Truth Library, State University of New York, New Paltz for access to Carlton Mabee’s
research. Thanks also to Amy L. Heyse, Heather Brown, and Aaron Ansell for their advice on this
project.
Notes
1 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of
Woman Suffrage, vol. 1 (New York: Source Book Press, 1887), 71.
2 There is some controversy as to the date on which Truth delivered the Akron speech.
The preponderance of the evidence points to May 29, 1851 as the date of delivery. The
Proceedings of the convention recorded that Truth spoke in the morning session of the second
day (i.e., May 29). Sources that indicated the speech was delivered on May 29 include Frances
Dana Gage and C. Peter Ripley. Suzanne Pullon Fitch and Roseann M. Mandziuk indicated that
the speech was delivered on May 28. bell hooks indicated that Truth spoke in Akron in 1852.
Several other references to the speech seem to take their evidence from hooks and repeat the
1852 error, including Sara L. Crawley, Lara J. Foley, and Constance L. Shehan, Manning Marable,
and Chris McCloud. See: Proceedings of the Woman’s Rights Convention, Held at Akron, Ohio,
May 28 and 29, 1851 (Cincinnati: Ben Franklin Book and Job Office, 1851), 7; F. D. Gage,
“Sojourner Truth,” New York Independent, April 23, 1863, 1; C. Peter Ripley, ed., The Black
Abolitionist Papers, vol. 4 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 81; Suzanne
Pullon Fitch and Roseann M. Mandziuk, Sojourner Truth as Orator: Wit, Story, and Song
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 103‐108; bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women
and Feminism (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1981), 159; Sara L. Crawley, Lara J. Foley, and
Constance L. Shehan, Gendering Bodies (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008),
219; Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race,
Political Economy, and Society (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1983), 69; and Chris McCloud,
“Truth, Sojourner (1790‐1883),” in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication
from Ancient Times to the Information Age, ed. Theresa Enos (New York: Garland, 1996), 732.
3 There is no version of the speech that claims to be a verbatim account of what Truth
said, nor were there modern journalistic standards concerning accuracy or transcription at the
time. Speeches were often stenographically recorded, but reporters did not claim that they
were offering a verbatim account in their publications. According to Hazel Dicken‐Garcia, “We
simply do not know today what was precisely true about an event reported in 1850. News
items did not identify sources, or did so so rarely—even as late as the 1890s—that it is
impossible to search out whatever sources might still exist. News items did not specify how
information was gathered; this in itself says something about the standards and values at the
time, but it leaves little basis for studying what standards might have governed news collection,
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preparation, and presentation.” See: Hazel Dicken‐Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth‐
Century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 67.
4 In the nineteenth century versions of the speech, the contraction employed is “A’n’t”
or “Ar’n’t.” The use of “Ain’t I a woman?” appears to be a twentieth‐century phenomenon.
Likely popularized by bell hooks as the title of her book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and
Feminism, the “ain’t” version goes back at least as far 1912 in The Crisis. See hooks, Ain’t I a
Woman: Black Women and Feminism; and Martha Gruening, “Two Suffrage Movements,” The
Crisis, September, 1912, 246.
5 “Woman’s Rights Convention,” Salem (OH) Anti‐Slavery Bugle, June 21, 1851.
6 Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” New York Independent, 1. This and all remaining references
to the Gage version of Truth’s 1851 Akron speech are cited with parenthetical references to
paragraph numbers in the speech text that accompanies this essay.
7 Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, vol. 2, Key Texts of the Early
Feminists (New York: Praeger, 1989), 99‐102.
8 The first edition of the Narrative was published privately in 1850 by William Lloyd
Garrison and edited by Olive Gilbert. Frances Titus made several changes for the 1875 edition of
the Narrative that Martin L. Ashley argued “were designed to enhance Truth’s public image. She
left out derogatory remarks, changed the dialect passages into standard English and
exaggerated public reaction to Truth’s speeches.” See: Sojourner Truth and Olive Gilbert,
Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State
of New York, in 1828: with a Portrait (Boston, MA: Printed for the author, 1850); Sojourner
Truth, Olive Gilbert, and Frances W. Titus, Narrative of Sojourner Truth; a Bondswoman of
Olden Time, Emancipated by the New York Legislature in the Early Part of the Present Century;
with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence, Drawn from Her “Book of Life” (Boston, MA:
Published for the Author,1875); and Martin L. Ashley, “Frances Titus: Sojourner’s ‘Trusted
Scribe,'” Heritage Battle Creek, A Journal of Local History 8 (Fall 1997),
http://www.sojournertruth .org/Library/Archive/Titus‐TrustedScribe.htm (accessed June 11,
2012).
9 Eye dialectal indicators are “visual devices to indicate a spoken dialect . . . . The
dialogue is suffused with spelling substitutions that do not change at all the pronunciation of
the words themselves. Far from even trying to approximate black speech . . . eye dialect
functions to mark the speaker, invidiously, as ignorant and of low class. Examples of such
spellings are ‘sed’ for ‘said,’ ‘kum’ for ‘come,’ and ‘kase’ for ‘case.'” See: Albert Tricomi, “Dialect
and Identity in Harriet Jacob’s Autobiography and Other Slave Narratives,” Callaloo 29, no. 2
(2006): 622.
10 See: Carleton Mabee and Susan Mabee Newhouse, Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet,
Legend (New York: New York University Press, 1993); and Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A
Life, a Symbol (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996).
11 One of the reasons that reliable versions of the Robinson and Gage texts are needed
is the wide variation in anthologized versions of speeches. Ripley and Sidonie Smith and Julia
Watson published only the Robinson version, while Beverly Guy‐Sheftall, McCloud, and Lucinda
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J. Peach included only the Gage text. Lorie Jenkins McElroy included an expurgated version of
the Gage text. Painter, Fitch and Mandzuik, Henry Louis Gates and Nellie Y. McKay, Andrew
Bailey, Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, and Richard W. Leeman and Bernard K. Duffy
printed Robinson and Gage. Philip S. Foner and Robert J. Branham and Dorthy L. Pennington
included an expurgated Gage text and the Robinson version. Shirley Wilson Logan printed
Gage’s and Campbell’s versions. See: Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:81‐83; Sidonie
Smith and Julia Watson, Before They Could Vote: American Women’s Autobiographical Writing,
1819‐1919 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 177‐179; Beverly Guy‐Sheftall,
Words of Fire: An Anthology of African‐American Feminist Thought (New York: New Press,
1995), 36; McCloud, “Truth, Sojourner (1790‐1883),” 732; Lucinda J. Peach, ed., Women in
Culture: A Women’s Studies Anthology (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 78‐79; Lorie
Jenkins McElroy, ed., Women’s Voices: A Documentary History of Women in America (Detroit:
UXL, 1997), 76‐79; Painter, Sojourner Truth, 125‐126; Fitch and Mandzuik, Sojourner Truth as
Orator, 103‐106; Henry Louis Gates and Nellie Y. McKay, The Norton Anthology of African
American Literature, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2004), 246‐247; Andrew
Bailey, The Broadview Anthology of Social and Political Thought. Volume One, from Plato to
Nietzsche (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2008), 963‐965; Manning Marable and Leith
Mullings, Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal: An African
American Anthology (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 66‐68; Richard W. Leeman and
Bernard K. Duffy, The Will of a People: A Critical Anthology of Great African American Speeches
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), 46‐48; Philip S. Foner and Robert J.
Branham, Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787‐1900 (Tuscaloosa: University of
Alabama Press, 1998), 228‐229; Dorthy L. Pennington, “The Discourse of African American
Women: A Case for Extended Paradigms,” in Understanding African American Rhetoric: Classical
Origins to Contemporary Innovations, ed. Ronald L. Jackson and Elaine B. Richardson (New York:
Routledge, 2003), 294‐295; and Shirley Wilson Logan, With Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology
of Nineteenth‐Century African‐American Women (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1995), 24‐25.
12 The top three results of a Google search for .edu sources of “Sojourner Truth speech”
delivered three different versions of the Gage text. None mention the context or controversy
over the versions. See: Modern History Source Book, “Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman,”
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sojtruth‐woman.html; History Matters, “‘Aint I A
Woman’: Reminiscences of Sojourner Truth Speaking,” http://historymatters.
gmu.edu/d/5740/; and Society for the Study of American Women Writers, “Sojourner Truth,”
http://www.lehigh.edu /~dek7/SSAWW/writTruthSpeech1.htm (accessed May 31, 2011).
13 Susan Zaeske and Sarah Jedd, “From Recovering Women’s Words to Documenting
Gender Constructs: Archival Research in the Twenty‐First Century,” in The Handbook of Rhetoric
and Public Address, ed. Shawn J. Parry‐Giles and J. Michael Hogan (Malden, MA: Wiley‐
Blackwell, 2010), 193.
14 There are several versions of the name Truth was given at birth. Most accounts agree
on Isabella, yet some argue for Belle or Bell. Painter called her Isabella, while Margaret
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Washington referred to her as Bell Hardenbergh, using the last name of her first enslaver.
Washington reported that after her freedom was purchased by Issac Van Wagenen in 1827, she
changed her name to Isabella Van Wagenen. Other sources give her the last name Bomefree or
Bumfree. Washington found that her father “James, was nicknamed ‘Bomefree,’ merging the
Dutch word for tree (bome) with the English word ‘free.'” See: Painter, Sojourner Truth, 3; and
Margaret Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 7,
9, 60.
15 Painter, Sojourner Truth, 113.
16 Fitch and Mandzuik, Sojourner Truth as Orator, 10.
17 Graham Russell Hodges, Root & Branch: African Americans in New York and East
Jersey, 1613‐1863 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 117.
18 Truth and Gilbert, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 17‐18.
19 Painter wrote of the historical evidence of Truth’s “five children . . . . Diana, born
about 1815; Peter, 1821; Elizabeth, 1825; and Sophia, about 1826. The fifth, perhaps named
Thomas, may have died in infancy or childhood and may have been born between Diana and
Peter.” See: Painter, Sojourner Truth, 19.
20 Truth and Gilbert, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 41.
21 Painter, Sojourner Truth, 25.
22 Painter, Sojourner Truth, 309n2.
23 Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 69‐80.
24 Both Painter and Washington claim the significance of this date is increased by its
coincidence with Pentecost, the Christian celebration of the Holy Spirit’s introduction to the
Apostles. Pentecost occurs seven weeks after Easter Sunday. In 1843, that would have been
June 4 (Easter Sunday was April 16); June 1, 1843 was a Thursday. If Truth changed her name
and left on Pentecost then perhaps the Narrative misstates the date, but no mention of
Pentecost is found in the Narrative. See: Truth and Gilbert, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 100;
Painter, Sojourner Truth, 73; and Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 148.
25 Truth and Gilbert, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 101.
26 The version of the speech found in the Book of Life reproduces the Gage text from
the National Anti‐Slavery Standard. See: Truth, Gilbert, and Titus, Narrative of Sojourner Truth,
131‐135; and F. D. Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” National Anti‐Slavery Standard, May 2, 1863, 4.
27 Nell Irvin Painter, “Difference, Slavery, and Memory: Sojourner Truth in Feminist
Abolitionism,” in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America,
ed. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 147.
28 Quoted in Truth and Gilbert, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 225.
29 For example, Truth was a part of the Massachusetts Northampton Association and
bought her first house there in 1850. See: Painter, Sojourner Truth, 75. At other times, Truth led
a life in which she was separated from large segments of white society due to the period’s
attitudes concerning gender and race. Carla L. Peterson also found that Truth’s “adult life was
marked by a relative isolation from the black community.” Carla L. Peterson, “Doers of the
Voices of Democracy 7 (2012): 21‐46
Phillips‐Anderson 39
Word”: African‐American Women Speakers and Writers in the North (1830‐1880) (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995), 24.
30 Marius Robinson was a Garrisonian who “taught in the Cherokee Nation (then
located in Georgia) and in Alabama before enrolling as a student at Lane Theological Seminary
in Cincinnati.” See: Painter, Sojourner Truth, 119.
31 “The Robinsons moved to Salem only in April 1851, when Marius had hesitantly
agreed, despite lack of experience in journalism, to become the editor—Emily the publishing
agent—of the only antislavery paper west of the Alleghenies, the Salem Anti‐Slavery Bugle.”
See: Painter, Sojourner Truth, 120.
32 C. D. Smalley, M. L. Gilbert, and E. Robinson, “Women’s Rights Convention,” Salem
(OH) Anti‐Slavery Bugle, March 29, 1851.
33 The church, which is no longer standing, was on Main Street between Perkins and
Market Streets. See: Ohio Historical Society, “Marker #6‐77: Site of Sojourner Truth’s Speech on
Women’s Rights,” Remarkable Ohio, http://www.remarkableohio.org/HistoricalMarker.aspx
?historicalMarkerId=169 (accessed June 11, 2012).
34 Proceedings of the Woman’s Rights Convention, 7.
35 See: “Woman’s Rights Convention,” Salem(OH) Anti‐Slavery Bugle, 4; Gage,
“Sojourner Truth,” New York Independent, 1; and Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 2:99‐
102.
36 Proceedings of the Woman’s Rights Convention, 1.
37 Earlier reports of the speech include the New York Tribune and the Boston Liberator.
See: “Woman’s Rights Convention,” New York Tribune, June 6, 1851, 7; and “Woman’s Rights
Convention,” Boston Liberator, June 13, 1851, 4.
38 “Woman’s Rights Convention,” Salem (OH) Anti‐Slavery Bugle, 4.
39 “Woman’s Rights Convention,” Salem (OH) Anti‐Slavery Bugle, 4.
40 Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” New York Independent, 1; Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” National
Anti‐Slavery Standard, 4; Truth, Gilbert, and Titus, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 131‐135; and
Stanton, Anthony, and M. Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, 1:115‐117.
41 Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” New York Independent, 1. The Narrative and the History of
Woman Suffrage omit Gage’s accuracy claim. In the History of Woman Suffrage, Truth was
identified as “Mrs. Stowe’s ‘Libyan Sibyl.” The text they included was largely similar to Gage’s
article in the National Anti‐Slavery Standard, but several edits were made, most notably, “ar’n’t
I a woman” to “a’n’t I a woman.” See: Truth, Gilbert, and Titus, Narrative of Sojourner Truth,
131‐135; Stanton, Anthony, and M. Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, 1:115‐117; and Gage,
“Sojourner Truth,” National Anti‐Slavery Standard, 4.
42 Mabee and Mabee Newhouse suggest that Gage published her version of Truth’s
speech in response to Stowe’s article. See: Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Sojourner Truth, the Libyan
Sibyl,” Atlantic Monthly, April 1863, 473‐481; and Mabee and Mabee Newhouse, Sojourner
Truth, 68.
43 See notes 11 and 41 above.
Voices of Democracy 7 (2012): 21‐46
Phillips‐Anderson 40
44 Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 2:99‐102. There are numerous expurgated
versions of the Gage text, often without comment or attribution. See: Jacqueline Bernard,
Journey Toward Freedom: The Story of Sojourner Truth (New York: Feminist Press at the City
University of New York: Distributed by Talman, 1990), 165‐167; Foner and Branham, Lift Every
Voice, 227‐228; Pennington, “The Discourse of African American Women,” 294; and James
Daley, Great Speeches by African Americans: Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama, Jr., and Others (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006), 11‐12.
45 See: Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Style and Content in the Rhetoric of Early Afro‐
American Feminists,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 72 (1986): 434‐455; Campbell, Man Cannot
Speak for Her, 2:99‐102; and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Agency: Promiscuous and Protean,”
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2, no. 1 (2005): 1‐19.
46 Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 1:20, 1:35n3.
47 Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 1:35n3. Campbell argued that given Truth’s
northern upbringing and native Dutch language “it is unlikely that, though illiterate, she spoke
in a substandard Southern dialect, in which the speech was recorded by Mrs. Gage.” See:
Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 2:99.
48 Tricomi argued that “to transcribe the dialects of slaves or ex‐slaves while neglecting
to render that of whites in dialect as well—whether by region, class or ethnicity, or all three—is
to make another inequitable, problematic ‘literary’ decision.” See: Tricomi, “Dialect and
Identity,” 619.
49 Campbell, “Agency: Promiscuous and Protean,” 17n28.
50 For a discussion of the practices of intralinguistic translation, see: Kenneth S.
Goldstein, “Bowdlerization and Expurgation: Academic and Folk,” The Journal of American
Folklore 80, no. 318 (1967): 374‐386.
51 Campbell, “Style and Content,” 435; and Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 2:100.
52 See: Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 2:100.
53 Campbell argued in 1986 that “In this period, ‘ain’t’ was the proper grammatical form
for a negative interrogative in the first person singular.” This claim seems difficult to support. J.
M. Garnett in 1881argued that “the very objectionable ain’t is certainly colloquial, but should
not be written, and when used in conversation should be limited to its use as a substituted for
are not: I ain’t and he ain’t are still solecisms.” See: Campbell, “Style and Content,” 444n6; and
J. M. Garnett, “Review,” American Journal of Philology 2, no. 8 (1881): 492.
54 Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 2:100.
55 Although the History of Woman Suffrage version is different from Gage’s original
publication, Campbell argued that she used it “because it is the longer and more frequently
cited version of the text.” Despite recognizing that the words Gage reported were almost
certainly inaccurate, Campbell claimed that “Gage’s fiction has a dramatic agency as a
performative text that is greater than historians’ facts.” See: Campbell, “Agency: Promiscuous
and Protean,” 13, 17n35.
Voices of Democracy 7 (2012): 21‐46
Phillips‐Anderson 41
56 Proceedings of the National Women’s Rights Convention Held at Cleveland, Ohio on
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, October 5th, 6th, and 7th, 1853 (Cleveland, OH: Gray,
Beardsley, Spear, & Co., 1854), 7.
57 Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” New York Independent, 1.
58 Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” New York Independent, 1.
59 Among the participants who also supported abolition were Mary A. W. Johnson,
Emily and Marius Robinson, and Jacob Heaton. See: Proceedings of the Woman’s Rights
Convention, Held at Akron, 3, 6‐7.
60 Painter observed that the call for the convention published in the Anti‐Slavery Bugle
“cited four evils that women’s rights would combat: war, intemperance, sensuality, and slavery.
Rather than fearing contamination by the antislavery cause, as Gage asserts, the organizers
deliberately reached out to abolitionists.” See: Painter, “Difference, Slavery, and Memory,” 151.
61 Peterson argued: “As with all other public speakers—male or female, white or
black—Truth needed carefully to assess the rhetorical context of her lecturing and to negotiate
the complex relationship between self, situation, subject, and audience, a task particularly
problematic . . . for black women.” See: Peterson, “Doers of the Word,” 18.
62 Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” New York Independent, 1.
63 The History of Woman Suffrage stated that “the reports of this Convention are so
meagre that we can not tell who were in the opposition; but from Sojourner Truth’s speech, we
fear that the clergy, as usual, were averse to enlarging the boundaries of freedom.” The
publication also noted that “this convention was remarkable for the large number of men who
took an active part in the proceedings” and mentioned Marius Robinson specifically. See:
Stanton, Anthony, and M. Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, 1:114.
64 Hogan based her analysis of Stanton’s rhetorical efforts in writing the History of
Woman Suffrage on Stanton’s citation of William Blackstone’s requirements of sovereignty:
wisdom, goodness and power. Stanton transformed power from a physical to a moral virtue,
which she argued women possessed along with the qualities of wisdom and goodness. Given
this framing of women’s claims to equal rights, the inclusion of Truth’s speech in the History of
Woman Suffrage seems a natural fit. In fact, Truth’s arguments seem to closely match
Blackstone’s definition in that Truth argued for equality on the basis of her physical strength,
intelligence, and goodness as demonstrated through religious faith. See: Lisa Shawn Hogan,
“Wisdom, Goodness and Power: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the History of Woman Suffrage,”
Gender Issues 23 (2006): 14.
65 Sallie Holley, A Life for Liberty, ed. John White Chadwick (New York: G. P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1899), 57.
66 The words in the book about Holley’s letters are not hers. Chadwick wrote the book
in 1899 and may have been influenced by Gage’s 1863 version of the events. In the preface to
the book, Chadwick wrote, “In editing the letters I have not been at pains to indicate omissions .
. . In a few instances I have . . . substitut[ed] other words for those betraying the carelessness of
rapid composition, spelling proper names in full where only initials were given, and so on. It is
not as if I were editing the Shakespeare folio of 1623 and were bound to preserve every
Voices of Democracy 7 (2012): 21‐46
Phillips‐Anderson 42
inaccuracy of whatever kind.” In addition, Caroline M. Severance, a speaker cited in the
quotation with Sojourner Truth was not mentioned in the official Proceedings. Washington
claims that Holley’s book provides strong evidence that Akron was not a peaceful meeting. See:
Holley, A Life for Liberty, iv; Proceedings of the Woman’s Rights Convention, Held at Akron,
Ohio, May 28 and 29, 1851; and Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 227.
67 “Woman’s Rights Convention,” Salem (OH) Anti‐Slavery Bugle, June 21, 1851.
68 Hannah Tracy Cutler, “Reminiscences of Early Woman Suffrage Work,” The Woman’s
Journal, September 26, 1896, 306‐307.
69 Cutler, “Reminiscences,” 306.
70 Cutler reported that there was a meeting after the convention to prepare the
participants’ written account. According to Cutler, Truth responded to Jane Swisshelm who
argued that the resolutions of the convention had gone too far and that women should be
“helped over bad roads, and to be well fed whether she worked hard or not.” See: Cutler,
“Reminiscences,” 306‐307.
71 It is certainly possible that Gage blended Truth’s speech from the convention and the
subsequent meeting or that Cutler’s reminiscence was contaminated by Gage’s account. Cutler
claimed to have calmed the convention after a speech by Emma Coe, while Gage said that she
was responsible for restoring order after Truth’s speech. Cutler also misstated the date of the
convention (she claimed it was held on June 18, 1851). See: Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” New York
Independent, 1; and Cutler, “Reminiscences,” 306‐307.
72 Proceedings of the Woman’s Rights Convention, Held at Akron, Ohio, May 28 and 29,
1851.
73 “Woman’s Rights Convention,” Salem (OH) Anti‐Slavery Bugle, 4.
74 For accounts of Truth’s speeches that recorded a sense of hostility, see: “Woman’s
Rights Convention,” New York Tribune, September 8, 1853, 5; and “Woman’s Rights
Convention,” New York Daily Times, September 8, 1853, 4.
75 None of the existing versions of the speech claim to be transcriptions, though Erlene
Stetson and Linda David argue that “Stowe and Gage used colonialist transcription techniques
that emphasized what they heard as the deviant aspects of Truth’s speech without conveying
any very good sense of its autonomy, and stereotypical assumptions doubtless lie behind many
of their distortions of Truth’s speech.” See: Erlene Stetson and Linda David, Glorying in
Tribulation: The Lifework of Sojourner Truth (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,
1994), 112.
76 “Address by a Slave Mother,” New York Tribune, September 7, 1853, 5.
77 Tricomi found that the letters Truth “dictated to transcribers in the IAPFP [Isaac and
Amy Post Family Papers] collection, from November 3, 1864, to August 26, 1873 . . . are all
written in Standard English, not dialect. The point speaks to Truth’s self‐representation in her
private correspondence as a speaker of Standard English.” See: Tricomi, “Dialect and Identity,”
632n1.
78 “Sojourner Truth,” Kalamazoo Daily Telegraph, July 8, 1879, 1.
Voices of Democracy 7 (2012): 21‐46
Phillips‐Anderson 43
79 See: Fitch and Mandzuik, Sojourner Truth as Orator, 6; and Truth and Gilbert,
Narrative of Sojourner Truth.
80 “‘Dis de way to York?’ says Dromo. ‘Yaw, dat is Yarikee,’ said the wench, pointing to
the steeples. ‘What devil you day?’ replies Dromo. ‘Yaw, mynheer.’ said the wench. ‘Damme
you, what you say?’ said Dromo again. ‘Yaw, yaw,’ said the girl. ‘You a damn black bitch,’ said
Dromo, and so rid on.” See: Alexander Hamilton, Hamilton’s Itinerarium; Being a Narrative of a
Journey from Annapolis, Maryland, through Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, from May to September, 1744,
by Doctor Alexander Hamilton, ed. Albert Bushnell Hart (Saint Louis, MO: Printed only for
private distribution by W. K. Bixby, 1907), 140.
81 Mabee and Mabee Newhouse, Sojourner Truth, 257n17. For a history of the slogan
“Am I Not a Man and a Brother,” see: Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race,
War, and Monument in Nineteenth‐Century America (Princeton, N.: Princeton University Press,
1997), 21‐23.
82 Maria Stewart, “Mrs. Stewart’s Farewell Address to Her Friends in the City of
Boston,” in African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness, ed. Milton C. Sernett,
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 204. For Stewart’s contributions to civil rights
rhetoric, see: Cheryl R. Jorgensen‐Earp, “Maria W. Miller Stewart, ‘Lecture Delivered at Franklin
Hall,'” Voices of Democracy 1 (2006): 15‐42.
83 Mabee and Mabee Newhouse, Sojourner Truth, 77.
84 See note 19 above.
85 Painter, Sojourner Truth, 32.
86 The author, listed only as “B.,” reported that “a large and intelligent audience was
present” and “the speeches were stirring and effective.” See: B., “The Woman’s Convention,”
Cleveland Daily True Democrat, May 30, 1851.
87 “The power and wit of this remarkable woman convulsed the audience with
laughter.” See: “Woman’s Rights Convention,” Boston Liberator, 4.
88 “The Cleveland Herald (Whig) reported that, although nearly half of the audience at
the convention were men, you did not hear ‘the sly leer, the half uttered jest, that you might
imagine.'” Mabee and Mabee Newhouse, Sojourner Truth, 70‐71.
89 See note 56 above.
90 Mabee and Mabee Newhouse found twenty‐seven reports of the convention written
soon after its conclusion, none of which mentioned hostility. They claim that none of the
“descriptions published at the time, despite their many different points of view, gives the
impression, as Gage did twelve years later, that there were ‘mobbish’ opponents of women’s
rights present, much less that the convention or its leaders were ever ‘staggering,’ or about to
panic, or about to be overwhelmed by these opponents.” They also argued that “If Truth really
had such a ‘magical influence’ that she ‘turned the whole tide’ in the convention from ‘mobbish’
hostility to support of women’s rights, is it not likely that Truth herself, in her letter in which she
reported attending the convention, would at least have hinted so? Or that Gage, in her
Voices of Democracy 7 (2012): 21‐46
Phillips‐Anderson 44
comments on the convention published soon after it was held, brief though they were, would
have suggested so?” Sojourner Truth, 71, 256n5, and 78.
91 “Woman’s Rights Convention,” New York Tribune, 7.
92 “Woman’s Rights Convention,” New York Tribune, 7.
93 There are few critical treatments of Sojourner Truth’s Akron speech in the rhetoric
and public address literature. Drema R. Lipscomb made critical judgments about Truth’s
rhetorical strategies using the History of Woman Suffrage version of the Gage text and
classifying Truth’s oratory as deliberative rhetoric. Lipscomb’s criticism focused largely on
Truth’s supposed retort to the clergyman questioning a woman’s right to speak. Jacqueline
Bacon used excerpts from the Tribune, Robinson, and Gage to examine Truth’s position as a
black female anti‐slavery activist. Phyllis Pearson Elmore acknowledged the authenticity
controversy, but used a speech version from a juvenile biography by Pat McKissack and Fredrick
McKissack as the basis for her critical judgment of the rhetorical strategies used by Truth. Fitch
and Mandzuik wrote the only book length examination of Truth’s rhetorical strategies. They
followed their book with an article about the rhetorical construction of Truth’s image and how
it has been used and misused by later readers. See: Drema R. Lipscomb, “Sojourner Truth: A
Practical Public Discourse,” in Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition, ed.
Andrea A. Lunsford (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), 227‐245; Jacqueline
Bacon, The Humblest May Stand Forth: Rhetoric, Empowerment, and Abolition (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 182; Phyllis Pearson Elmore, “Agitational Versatility:
When Truth Met Jordan,” in Sexual Rhetoric: Media Perspectives on Sexuality, Gender, and
Identity, ed. Meta G. Carstarphen and Susan C. Zavoina (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999),
175‐184; Pat McKissack and Fredrick McKissack, Sojourner Truth: A Voice for Freedom (Hillside,
NJ: Enslow, 1992), 19; Fitch and Mandzuik, Sojourner Truth as Orator; and Roseann M.
Mandziuk and Suzanne Pullon Fitch, “The Rhetorical Construction of Sojourner Truth,” Southern
Communication Journal 66, no. 2 (2001): 120‐138.
94 Fitch and Mandzuik, Sojourner Truth as Orator, 18.
95 Painter, Sojourner Truth, 126.
96 Nancy Isenberg, Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1998), 141.
97 Isenberg, Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America, 141.
98 Bacon, The Humblest May Stand Forth, 182.
99 See: Shirley J. Yee, Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828‐1860
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 40‐59.
100 “Woman’s Rights Convention,” New York Tribune, 7.
101 Fitch and Mandzuik, Sojourner Truth as Orator, 5.
102 Cicero, On the Ideal Orator, ed and trans. J. M. May and J. Wisse (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 186.
103 For a discussion of the use of humor by African American women, see: Glenda
Carpio, Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery (New York, Oxford University
Press, 2008), 65‐66. For the role of printed humor by women, see: A. Cheree Carlson,
Voices of Democracy 7 (2012): 21‐46
Phillips‐Anderson 45
“Limitations of the Comic Frame: Some Witty American Women of the Nineteenth Century,”
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 74, (1988): 310‐322.
104 There was the further concern that her supporters may have understood the
argument within the humor, but used their laughter to distance themselves from culpability.
Painter argued that “delivered straight, these lines would never have elicited cheers and
applause from her mostly white audiences. She spoke of sinful whites and vengeful blacks, but
her humor let her listeners exempt themselves. They did not hear wrath against whites, but
against the advocates of slavery. It is understandable, no doubt, that Truth’s audiences, who
wanted so much to love this old black woman who had been a slave, found it difficult to fathom
the depths of her bitterness.” See: Painter, Sojourner Truth, 138.
105 For a discussion of the construction of gender in biblical interpretation, see:
Elizabeth A. Clark, “Ideology, History, and the Construction of ‘Woman’ in Late Ancient
Christianity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2, no. 2 (1994): 155‐184.
106 It is certainly the case that woman’s rights speakers often met with opposition,
particularly from the clergy. The leaders of the woman’s rights movement did not allow the use
of biblical precepts as an argument against woman’s rights to stand unchallenged. Ellen Carol
DuBois claimed that the movement indicted “the churches themselves for being institutional
bulwarks of slavery and women’s oppression.” See: Ellen Carol DuBois, Woman Suffrage and
Women’s Rights (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 58‐59.
107 According to the 1850 United States Census, the illiteracy rate for whites was 4.92
percent and the illiteracy rate for the “free colored” population was 20.83 percent. United
States Census Office, Statistical View of the United States, Embracing its Territory, Population—
White, Free Colored, and Slave—Moral and Social Condition, Industry, Property, and Revenue;
The Detailed Statistics of Cities, Towns and Counties; Being a Compendium of the Seventh
Census, to which are Added the Results of Every Previous Census, Beginning With 1790, in
Comparative Tables, with Explanatory and Illustrative Notes, Based upon the Schedules and
(Washington,
DC,
1854),
152,
Other
Official
Sources
of
Information
http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/0231553 (accessed June 11, 2012).
108 The story of Lazarus is found in John 11:1‐45.
109 John 11:21.
110 The Bible recounted that Jesus waited two days before coming to help and, in that
time, Lazarus died. “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall
never die. Believest thou this?” See: John 11:25‐26.
111 John 11:32.
112 John 11:35.
113 Bacon, The Humblest May Stand Forth, 198.
114 The phrase goes back to at least 1637. See: Bartlett Jere Whiting, Early American
Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1977), 202.
Voices of Democracy 7 (2012): 21‐46
Phillips‐Anderson 46
115 Lindal Buchanan, Regendering Delivery: The Fifth Canon and Antebellum Women
Rhetors (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 139.
116 Logan concluded “in the case of Truth, since textual authenticity is virtually
impossible to achieve, examining various representations seems a reasonable compromise and
one that alerts readers to the transcriptive problems and possibilities.” See: Logan, With Pen
and Voice, 21.
117 Rosalyn Terborg‐Penn, “African American Women and the Woman Suffrage
Movement,” in One Woman, One Vote, ed. Marjorie Spruill Wheeler (Troutdale, OR: NewSage
Press, 1995), 31.
118 Painter, Sojourner Truth.
119 Painter, Sojourner Truth, 176.
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 1905
Chapter II
The Spirit of Capitalism
In the title of this study is used the somewhat pretentious phrase, the spirit of
capitalism. What is to be understood by it? The attempt to give anything like a
definition of it brings out certain difficulties which are in the very nature of this type
of investigation.
If any object can be found to which this term can be applied with any
understandable meaning, it can only be an historical individual, i.e. a complex of
elements associated in historical reality which we unite into a conceptual whole
from the standpoint of their cultural significance.
Such an historical concept, however, since it refers in its content to a phenomenon
significant for its unique individuality, cannot be defined according to the
formula genus proximunt, differentia specifica, but it must be gradually put together
out of the individual parts which are taken from historical reality to make it up.
Thus the final and definitive concept cannot stand at the beginning of the
investigation, but must come at the end. We must, in other words, work out in the
course of the discussion, as its most important result, the best conceptual
formulation of what we here understand by the spirit of capitalism, that is the best
from the point of view which interests us here. This point of view (the one of which
we shall speak later) is, further, by no means the only possible one from which the
historical phenomena we are investigating can be analyzed. Other standpoints
would, for this as for every historical phenomenon, yield other characteristics as the
essential ones. The result is that it is by no means necessary to understand by the
spirit of capitalism only what it will come to mean to us for the purposes of our
analysis. This is a necessary result of the nature of historical concepts which attempt
for their methodological purposes not to grasp historical reality in abstract general
formulae, but in concrete genetic sets of relations which are inevitably of a
specifically unique and individual character.
Thus, if we try to determine the object, the analysis and historical explanation of
which we are attempting, it cannot be in the form of a conceptual definition, but at
least in the beginning only a provisional description of what is here meant by the
spirit of capitalism. Such a description is, however, indispensable in order clearly to
understand the object of the investigation. For this purpose we turn to a document
of that spirit which contains what we are looking for in almost classical purity, and
at the game time has the advantage of being free from all direct relationship to
religion, being thus for our purposes, free of preconceptions.
“Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and
goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during
his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really
spent, rather thrown away, five shillings, besides.
“Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is
due, he gives me interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This
amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes
good use of it.
“Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget
money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six,
turned again it is seven and three pence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred
pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the
profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her
offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it
might have produced, even scores of pounds.”
“Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse . He that
is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time,
and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of
great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a
young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore
never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a
disappointment shut up your friend’s purse for ever.
“The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of
your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes
him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice
at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day;
demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump. ‘It shows, besides, that you are
mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man,
and that still increases your credit.’
“Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a
mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact
account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains
at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how
wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what
might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great
inconvenience.
“For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you
are a man of known prudence and honesty.
“He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the
price for the use of one hundred pounds.
“He that wastes idly a groat’s worth of his time per day, one day with another,
wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.
“He that idly loses five shillings’ worth of time, loses five shillings, and might as
prudently throw five shillings into the sea.
“He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might
be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man becomes old,
will amount to a considerable sum of money.”
It is Benjamin Franklin who preaches to us in these sentences, the same which
Ferdinand Kurnberger satirizes in his clever and malicious Picture of American
Culture as the supposed confession of faith of the Yankee. That it is the spirit of
capitalism which here speaks in characteristic fashion, no one will doubt, however
little we may wish to claim that everything which could be understood as pertaining
to that spirit is contained in it. Let us pause a moment to consider this passage, the
philosophy of which Kurnberger sums up in the words, “They make tallow out of
cattle and money out of men.” The peculiarity of this philosophy of avarice appears
to be the ideal of the honest man of recognized credit, and above all the idea of a
duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital, which is assumed as an end
in itself. Truly what is here preached is not simply a means of making one’s way in
the world, but a peculiar ethic. The infraction of its rules is treated not as foolishness
but as forgetfulness of duty. That is the essence of the matter. It is not mere business
astuteness, that sort of thing is common enough, it is an ethos. This is the quality
which interests us.
When Jacob Fugger, in speaking to a business associate who had retired and who
wanted to persuade him to do the same, since he had made enough money and
should let others have a chance, rejected that as pusillanimity and answered that “he
(Fugger) thought otherwise, he wanted to make money as long as he could,” the
spirit of his statement is evidently quite different from that of Franklin. What in the
former case was an expression of commercial daring and a personal inclination
morally neutral, in the latter takes on the character of ethically colored maxim for
the conduct of life. The concept spirit of capitalism is here used in this specific sense,
it is the spirit of modern capitalism. For that we are here dealing only with Western
European and American capitalism is obvious from the way in which the problem
was stated. Capitalism existed in China, India, Babylon, in the classic world, and in
the Middle Ages. But in all these cases, as we shall see, this particular ethos was
lacking.
Now, all Franklin’s moral attitudes are colored with utilitarianism. Honesty is useful,
because it assures credit; so are punctuality, industry, frugality, and that is the
reason they are virtues. A logical deduction from this would be that where, for
instance, the appearance of honesty serves the same purpose, that would suffice,
and an unnecessary surplus of this virtue would evidently appear to Franklin’s eyes
a unproductive waste. And as a matter of fact, the story in his autobiography of his
conversion to those virtues, or the discussion of the value of a strict maintenance of
the appearance of modesty, the assiduous belittlement of one’s own deserts in order
to gain general recognition later, confirms this impression. According to Franklin,
those virtues, like all others, are only in so far virtues as they are actually useful to
the individual, and the surrogate of mere appearance is always sufficient when it
accomplishes the end in view. It is a conclusion which is inevitable for strict
utilitarianism. The impression of many Germans that the virtues professed by
Americanism are pure hypocrisy seems to have been confirmed by this striking case.
But in fact the matter is not by any means so simple.
Benjamin Franklin’s own character, as it appears in the really unusual candidness of
his autobiography, belies that suspicion. The circumstance that he ascribes his
recognition of the utility of virtue to a divine revelation which was intended to lead
him in the path of righteousness, shows that something more than mere garnishing
for purely egocentric motives is involved.
In fact, the summum bonum of his ethic, the earning of more and more money,
combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all
completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is
thought of…