Ar’n’t I a woman?
Mrs. F. D. Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” Herald
of Progress (New York), May 16, 1863: 3.
The following by Fannie Gage is an 1863 redaction of her famous article about Sojourner Truth. When it was printed here in The Herald of Progress (just reprinted from The New York Independent), Gage had just written it, having been stimulated to do so by having read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s article,“Sojourner Truth, The Libyan Sibyl,” which had just appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (volume 11, issue 66, April 1863: 473-482, available at the Making of America website at Cornell). By the time this wound up being reprinted in The History of Woman Suffrage almost twenty years later, it had been slightly “corrected” and edited down, leaving out some of the interesting context for the speech. Because of the intense scrutiny that this speech has received—as it has been further reprinted from The History of Woman Suffrage—I have taken special pains to reproduce this version below precisely as it was printed, including all punctuations and spellings.The story of “Sojourner Truth,” by Mrs. H. B. Stowe, in the April number of The Atlantic, will be read by thousands in the East and West with intense interest; and as those who knew this remarkable woman will lay down this periodical, there will be heard in home-circles throughout Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, many an anecdote of the weird, wonderful creature, who was at once a marvel and a mystery.
Mrs. Stowe’s remarks on Sojourner’s opinion of Woman’s Rights, bring vividly to my mind a scene in Ohio, never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it. In the Spring of 1851, a Woman’s Rights Convention was called in Akron, Ohio, by the friends of that then wondrously unpopular cause. I attended that Convention. No one at this day can conceive of the state of feeling of the multitude that came together on that occasion.
The Convention in the Spring of 1850, in Salem, Ohio, reported at length in The New York Tribune by that staunch friend of human rights, Oliver Johnson, followed in October of the same year by another convention at Worcester, Mass., well reported and well abused, with divers minor conventions, each amply vilified and caricatured, had set the world all agog, and the people, finding the women in earnest, turned out in large numbers to see and hear.
The leaders of the movement, staggering under the weight of disapprobation already laid upon them, and tremblingly alive to every appearance of evil that might spring up in their midst, were many of them almost thrown into panics on the first day of the meeting, by seeing a tall, gaunt black woman in a gray dress and white turban, surmounted by an uncouth sun-bonnet, march deliberately into the church, walk with the air of a queen up the aisle, and take her seat upon the pulpit steps. A buzz of disapprobation was heard all over the house, and such words as these fell upon listening ears:
“An abolition affair!” “Woman’s Rights and niggers!” “We told you so. Go it, old darkey!”
I chanced upon that occasion to wear my first laurels in public life, as president of the meeting. At my request, order was restored, and the business of the hour went on. The morning session closed; the afternoon session was held; the evening exercises came and went; old Sojourner, quiet and reticent as the “Libyan Statue,” sat crouched against the wall on a corner of the pulpit stairs, her sun-bonnet shading her eyes, her elbow on her knee, and her chin resting on her broad, hard palm.
At intermission she was busy selling the “Life of Sojourner Truth,” a narrative of her own strange and adventurous life.
Again and again timorous and trembling ones came to me and said with earnestness, “Don’t let her speak, Mrs. G. It will ruin us. Every newspaper in the land will have our cause mixed with abolition and niggers, and we shall be utterly denounced.” My only answer was, “We shall see when the time comes.”
The second day the work waxed warm. Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Universalist ministers came in to hear and discuss the resolutions brought forth. One claimed superior rights and privileges for man, because of superior intellect; another because of the manhood of Christ. If God had desired the equality of woman, he would have given some token of his will, through the birth, life, and death of the Savior. Another gave us a theological view of the awful sin of our first mother. There were few women in those days that dared to “speak in the meeting,” and the august teachers of the people, with long-winded bombast, were seeming to get the better of us, while the boys in the galleries and sneerers among the pews were enjoying hugely the discomfiture, as they supposed, of the strong-minded. Some of the tender-skinned friends were growing indignant and on the point of losing dignity, and the atmosphere of the convention betokened a storm.
Slowly from her seat in the corner rose Sojourner Truth, who, till now, had hardly lifted her head. “Don’t let her speak,” gasped half a dozen in my ear. She moved slowly and solemnly to the front; laid her old bonnet at her feet; and turned her great speaking eyes to me.
There was a hissing sound of disapprobation above and below. I rose and announced “Sojourner Truth,” and begged the audience to keep silence for a few moments. The tumult subsided at once, and every eye was fixed on this almost Amazon form, which stood nearly six feet high, head erect, and eye piercing the upper air like one in a dream. At her first word there was a profound hush. She spoke in deep tones, which, though not loud, reached every ear in the house, and away through the throng at the doors and windows.
“Well, chillen, whar dar’s so much racket dar must be som’ting out o’ kilter. I tink dat ’twixt de niggers of de South and de women at de Norf, all a-talkin’ ’bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all dis here talkin’ ’bout? Dat man ober dar say dat woman needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place eberywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gives me any best place;” and, raising herself to her full hight [sic], and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked, “And ar’n’t I a woman? Look at me, look at my arm,” and she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing its tremendous muscular power. “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? Den dey talks ’bout dis ting in de head. What dis dey call it?” “Intellect,” whispered some one near. “Dat’s it, honey. What’s dat got to do with woman’s rights or niggers’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint and yourns holds a quart, wouldn’t ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?” and she pointed her significant finger and sent a keen glance at the minister who had made the argument. The cheering was long and loud. “Den dat little man in black dar, he say woman can’t have as much right as man ’cause Christ wa’n’t a woman. Whar did your Christ come from?”
Rolling thunder could not have stilled that crowd as did those deep wonderful tones, as she stood there with outstretched arms and eye of fire. Raising her voice still louder, she repeated:
“Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him.” Oh! what a rebuke she gave the little man. Turning again to another objector, she took up the defense of Mother Eve. I cannot follow her through it all. It was pointed and witty and solemn, eliciting at almost every sentence deafening applause; and she ended by asserting “that if de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all her one lone, all dese togeder,” and she glanced her eye over us, “ought to be able to turn it back and git it right side up again, and now dey is asking to, de men better let ’em.” (Long-continued cheering.) “Bleeged to ye for hearin’ on me, and now old Sojourner ha’n’t got nothin’ more to say.”
Amid roars of applause she turned to her corner, leaving more than one of us with streaming eyes and hearts beating with gratitude. She had taken us up in her great strong arms and carried us safely over the slough of difficulty, turning the whole tide in our favor.
I have given but a faint sketch of her speech. I have never in my life seen anything like the magical influence that subdued the mobbish spirit of the day, and turned the jibes and sneers of an excited crowd into notes of respect and admiration. Hundreds rushed up to shake hands and congratulate the glorious old mother, and bid her “God-speed” on her mission of “testifying agin concernin’ the wickedness of this here people.”
Once upon a Sabbath day in Michigan an abolition meeting was held. Parker Pillsbury was speaker, and expressed himself freely upon the conduct of the churches regarding slavery. While he spoke, there came up a fearful thunder-storm. A young Methodist rose, and, interrupting him, said he felt alarmed; he felt as if God’s judgment was about to fall upon him for daring to listen to such blasphemy; that it made his hair almost rise with terror. Here a voice sounding above the rain that beat upon the roof, the sweeping surge of the winds, the crashing of the limbs of trees, swaying of branches, and the rolling of thunder, spoke out: “Chile, don’t be skeered; you’re not goin’ to be harmed. I don’t speck God’s ever heern tell on ye!”
It was all she said, but it was enough. I might multiply anecdotes (and some of the best cannot be told) till your pages would not contain them, and yet the fund not be exhausted. Therefore I will close, only saying to those who think public opinion does not change, that they have only to look at the progress of ideas from the standpoint of old Sojourner Truth twelve years ago.
The despised and mobbed African, now the heroine of an article in the most popular periodical in the United States. Then Sojourner could say, “If women wants rights, let her take ’em.” Now, women do take them, and public opinion sustains them.
Sojourner Truth is not dead; but, old and feeble, she rests from her labors near Battle Creek, Michigan.—Independent.
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