An Analysis Of Sojourner Truth's Ain T I A Woman

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At the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in December of 1851, Sojourner Truth spoke to a crowd of men and women, both black and white, about not only the inequitable treatment she receives as an African-American, but the impolite and coarse treatment she receives as a woman. In the speech, “Ain’t I a Woman,” she acknowledges the genteel manner in which women were expected to be treated by society, such as helping them into carriages or lifting them over puddles, and proclaims with chagrin that she has never once been graced with such pleasantries. She explains how she does the labor of a man in the fields and the labor of a woman at home and is still shown no favor or courtesy. She claims that intellect has nothing to do with “rights,” but instead everyone was entitled to them and those who deny that are simply malicious. She strikes down a townsman’s argument that women are inferior because “Christ wasn’t a woman” by asking him just how Christ came to be. She finished by suggesting that if Eve could “turn the world upside down all alone” then what was stopping women now from changing it again?…show more content…
As a slave she was seen and treated as property, as a woman she was only seen as something to produce more property. She had most of her children sold, her rights as a human stripped away, and her femininity derided. She was sold to different plantations over the years, some worse than others. After several years of abuse, she managed to escape with one of her five children and gained freedom under the New York Emancipation Act. Later, while working in a farming community, she met and began to work with several abolitionist and women’s rights supporters and began traveling and speaking at events in support of women’s’ rights

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