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Truth celebrated in Akron

© Diane Stresing

In 1797, near the Hudson River in New York, a slave girl named Isabella was born. Thirty years later, she was freed. Free to think, move and choose a name of her own. She chose Sojourner Truth.

She could not read or write, but she knew the bible well. She spoke out publicly against slavery and social injustice.

Truth crossed paths several times with anti-slavery spokesman Frederick Douglass. He encouraged her to continue to oppose slavery. Ever outspoken, Truth challenged Douglass during a speech on more than one occasion. In a speech where he proclaimed that only bloodshed would end slavery, Truth yelled out, "Frederick, is God dead?" Douglass later described Truth as a "strange compound of wit and wisdom, of wild enthusiasm, and flint-like common sense."

In 1864, Truth traveled to Washington DC to meet with Abraham Lincoln. It was reported that she said to Lincoln, "I never heard of you before you ran for President," to which he is said to have replied, with a laugh, "I heard of you long before I thought about running for President." With such a reputation, it may not be surprising that Truth left a mark on Ohio.

It was in Akron that Sojourner Truth delivered her hallmark "Ain't I a Woman" speech. It was May 29th 1851, at the second Ohio Women's Rights Convention held at the Old Stone Church on North High Street.

She was listening, the story goes, to several male ministers explain why women should not have the right to vote. One minister suggested that women were weaker, and less intelligent, than men. He said that God had intended for men to have more power than women, and offered as evidence the fact that Christ was a man.

It was here that Truth stood up. She was six feet tall, and her frame and her words made quite an impression on all in the room. Descriptions of the speech vary, but these lines are included in all of transcriptions I've seen.

She walked to the stage and said:

"Ain't I a woman?
I have ploughed and planted, and worked as hard as any man, and eat as much, too. And
Ain't I a woman?
My mother bore ten children and saw them sold off to slavery, and when I cried with my mother's grief,
nobody but Jesus heard me.
And ain't I a woman?

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