Laurence Yansunnu

COMM 360

Dr. Styer

Research Paper - Final

Sojourner Truth’s Ability to Capture an Audience of Naysayers

and What We can Learn From Her:

Intro:

As a black woman, living in America in this very moment has awakened a fear that may

not have ever truly escaped me, but laid dormant for quite some time. Over the course of the

presidential election, and presidency so far, we have seen a new wave of feminism rising with

the 2017 Women’s march on Washington - featuring thousands of women from all over the

country marching the streets of our capital, dawning pink hats to advocate for social change

(ranging from various issues including immigration, and human rights). To the creation of the

#MeToo campaign aimed at empowering women to speak up and be validated for their traumatic

experiences. With new found hope, like I’ve stated previously, comes old fear. Fear of the

ignorant exclusion of all voices different from the white cisgender-heteronormative female

narrative, that once (and not necessarily still) shaped feminism and feminist beliefs. This issue is

one that has been raised throughout movements, literature, and art by black women and all

women of color fighting for inclusion within a movement supposedly meant for them. Many of

the black women who have fought and continue fighting for equality include, but are not limited
to, Ida B. Wells, Anna Julia Cooper, Sojourner Truth, Audre Lorde, and Alicia Garza. At a time

when a resurgence of protests for justice and reform is taking place, how do women (of my time)

cut from the cloth of multiplicity of intersections deal with ignorance within movements that

claim to have moved past past ignorances? I think in these times, it is extremely important to

research the ways in which those before me resisted ignorance and blatant racism in their time

periods. This better equips me and my generation, with knowledge and tools to push back any

form of rising ignorance within movements made for equality and reform.

Background:

Before delving more into my thesis, it is important for me to establish the way I came to

this thought process and the terms important to my research on this topic. During my first year

here at the University of Maryland I chose to enroll in a Women’s Studies course. This was the

first time in my life where I had been in a course designed specifically to teach me about the

history of women in media, culture, and writing. Most of my past courses glazed over the idea

that some people didn’t see women as equals, this course, however, forced me to be introspective

and to recognize the ways in which I had been affected by my past teachings of (or lack thereof)

society’s views of women. In this course, a lot of discourse centered on feminism, race,

sexuality, and class. It was in said course that I first learned about the term ​intersectionality​, first

coined by ​Kimberlé Crenshaw in her 1989 essay “Demarginalizing the intersection of Race and

Sex: a Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist

politics.” (Crenshaw, 1989). Intersectionality, in the most basic of terms, is the idea that

individual’s cannot speak of their experiences solely from the perspectives of one aspect of their

lives. For example, the experiences of an asian immigrant woman cannot be understood solely on
the basis of the fact that she’s a woman or solely from the perspective of being asian or an

immigrant; In order to fully understand her experience, all aspects of her identity must be taken

into account. She must be given the chance to speak from the perspective of all of those different

sections and parts of her life, combined, for they are constantly impacting one another (Thomas

& Crenshaw, 2004). Since Crenshaw’s coining of the term, it has been used widely in a number

of feminist discourse and writing. For example, a few years ago Nigerian Novelist Chimamanda

Ngozi Adichie gave a Ted Talk titled “The danger of a single story”. In this talk she tells the

story of her past dealing with microaggressions involving her past college roommate who would

ask how she learned to speak english so well and was confused when she told her that english

was actually Nigeria’s official language. Ngozi highlighted that her past roommate had “a

singular story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility

of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no

possibility of a connection as human equals.” She uses the story of her roommate to highlight the

issues that present themselves when not all aspects of a place, person, or thing are taken into

account before processed and understood. She emphasizes at the end of her speech that “​when

we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we

regain a kind of paradise." (Ngozi, 2009). I needed to bring this ted talk into this paper to

properly show the influence that the idea behind ​intersectionality ​still has on most, if not all,

rhetors years after the term was coined. Now although this term wasn’t coined until the year

1989, it is imprudent, and quite frankly insulting, to think that the idea behind the term was not

something that had been talked about years before its debut in Crenshaw’s essay.
 One of the (many) first pioneers for women’s rights for all women was Sojourner Truth.

By highlighting the ways in which her race and sex directly and simultaneously impacted her

standing in society and in the women’s suffrage movement, she gracefully challenged every

voice involved in the conversation to essentially - do better, shade intended. That is why for my

research project for this course, I chose to research and analyze the rhetoric used by Sojourner

Truth in her “Ain’t I a Woman” speech made at the Women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio

in 1851. The issue of racism and inequality within the feminist movement is an old, but

prominent issue in the movement. This is an issue that has been in existence since the beginning

of the women’s suffrage movement in the 1800s. Susan B Anthony, a prominent white figure in

the suffrage movement, was quoted as saying, “​I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will

ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.” (Wesleyan University,

“Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”) As if negro women were not of existence.

Racism/ignorance even reared its head, most recently, in the #SlutWalk movement - because by

reclaiming the word “slut” for “all women”, the founders disregarded the rhetoric already

attributed to black women concerning their sexuality and sexual behavior (ie. Jezebel

stereotype), thus displaying a gross ignorance towards issues that don’t have a direct impact on

white women. This was a concern that was raised by the Black Women’s Blueprint as “An Open

Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk”. With this letter, this human and civil rights

organization was able to effectively target and challenge an oppressive form of rhetoric through

use of their own powerful rhetoric (Black Women’s Blueprint, 2011). With these kinds of gross

indications of ignorance, comes black women and women of color - while carrying the burdens
of a society that thrives on the constant degradation and dehumanization of already marginalized

groups, viciously fighting back through the use of their voices.

One of the earliest instances of women of color’s resistance through rhetoric is that of

the most famous 19th century orator, Sojourner Truth. Like stated previously, I will be analyzing

the ways in which Sojourner Truth used rhetoric to resist racism within the feminist movement,

at a time where no black voices were represented or valued in the fight for women’s rights.

When analyzing this speech, it is important to remember that it was never transcribed or written

by Sojourner Truth, herself, and only spoken. The transcribed versions were made by other

sources like the ​Anti-Slavery Bugle​, which published their interpretation of the speech a month

after she had given it. For this research paper I will be using both the ​Anti-Slavery Bugle

interpretation (1851) and the interpretation used in Truth’s ​Narrative (1875) and in Elizabeth

Cady Stanton’s ​History of Woman Suffrage (1881) to effectively analyze her rhetoric as

interpreted and written by others.

Description:

Anti-Slavery Bugle (1851):

Sojourner Truth, a freed black woman, took the stage on May 29th, 1851 at the Women’s

Rights Convention, in a room full of white women and men, and spoke a truth that so deeply

resonated with the experiences of women of color all around the country, then and now. With her

bold decision to speak up during her second attendance of a women’s rights convention

(Guy-Sheftall, 2011, pg. 35), and inserting herself into the conversation, she paves a way for

many black feminists after her, regarding the manner in which she handled the situation. Like

mentioned previously, her speech isn’t one that is written, due to her lack of knowledge of
reading and writing, the most effective way she was able to spread her wisdom was through

word of mouth. Because of this, her speech was interpreted differently in two different versions;

One version was that of the Anti-Slavery Bugle, an abolitionist newspaper from 1845-1861

(Chronicling America), which had been recorded on June 21, 1851- a month after Truth had

made this speech. The other version was that of Frances Gage, the president of the Women’s

Rights Convention in Ohio in 1851, who first recorded Truth’s speech in 1863 for the New York

Independent ​(The Sojourner Truth Project). This version would be printed in both Truth’s

Narrative and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s ​History of Woman Suffrage, ​and eventually become the

most quoted version of the two.

In the ​Anti-Slavery Bugle interpretation of the speech, she starts off with “May I say a

few words?” addressing the President of the convention, Francis Gage, as if she is asking

permission to be heard, and only proceeds when this freedom to speak is granted. In this version

Truth calls herself “a woman’s rights [sic.]” I am guessing she refers to herself as an activist, or

something of resemblance to this. She then proceeds to describe that she has “as much muscle as

any man, and can do as much as any man.” - comparing herself to a figure that is regarded as

strong, powerful, and somewhat invincible in society at the time. She reiterates this point by

stating that she has “plowed ​and reaped ​and husked ​and chopped ​and mowed and can any man

do that?” - confirming that by being able to do any given action that men can do, it is shown that

she is just as strong as any man and not just mentally but physically no less. She continues her

speech by touching on the notion of “intellect”, and the metaphor of “a pint” and “a quart”, and

the distribution of these quantities between men and women. She compares a woman’s

possession of rights compared to man’s possession of rights as having a pint full compared to a
quarts full - she does this to perhaps appease men who feared giving too many rights to women,

by saying that women would only take what best fit for them and “not more than [their] pint’ll

hold.”

She seems to taunt the opposers in the audience by saying,“the poor men seem to be all in

confusion and don’t know what to do. Why children, if you have women's rights give it to her

and you will feel better.”(​Anti-Slavery Bugle, 1851). The language used here was very interesting

to me, from the context I interpret it as her mocking the men for their behavior resembling that of

children - which if this were her intended tone, go off! - But it could also be interpreted as

another older black woman, having to switch her dialect into a more familiar tone of voice

(mammy-style) for her audience to effectively receive her message and not take it as a

threatening or menacing remark. This isn’t written similarly in the ​Narrative and ​History of

Woman Suffrage version, which is something I’d like to touch on later. In the ​Anti-Slavery Bugle

interpretation of the speech, she then discloses that she can’t read, but can hear. And through

hearing the Bible, she’s learned that “Eve caused man to sin” but that “if woman upset the world,

do give her a chance to set it right side up again.” She then goes deeper into rhetoric about the

bible and familiar stories from the Bible concerning women’s roles. She states, and I love this,

“how came jesus into the world? Through God who created him and woman who bore him. Man,

where is your part?” - further reinforcing the woman’s important role in life, and her right to

rights. Even at the end of her speech, she continues to refer to men as “poor men” almost as a

play on how “hard” making this decision must be for them, considering how easy they have it in

all aspects of life.

History of Woman Suffrage ​(1881)​ ​and ​Narrative ​(1875)​:

In Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s ​History of Woman Suffrage and in 1875’s version Truth’s

Narrative​, Truth doesn’t start off by asking for permission, like written in the previous version,

but instead addresses the crowd as “children”. She directly mocks the white men immediately

within her first line by claiming how “in a fix” they’re going to be once they find out that the

“negroes of the south” are meeting with “the women at the North”. This seems to be a theme in

her style of speech when referring to the audience, or men for that matter, almost in a sly and

taunting manner. In this version she says a man in the audience “says women need to be helped

into carriages, and lifted over ditches..” but “nobody ever helps [her] into carriages, or over

mud-puddles..” she highlights the difference in the way she’s treated in comparison to the way

her white counterparts are treated. If a woman is to be taken care of and looked after at all times,

than isn’t she to be looked after as well? This begs the question that she eventually asks, “Arn’t I

a woman?” by all past definitions of the word, she is a woman. She has “plowed, and planted,

and gathered into barns … [has birthed] thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to

slavery and when [she] cried out with mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard” - this powerful and

chilling anecdote, ties her narrative into the point she’s trying to make that even with the burdens

of slavery, and the color of her skin - she is still a woman. One who dealt with any pain a mother,

a person, and a woman would feel if put in the situations she was in, so why then wasn’t she

considered a woman and treated as a “woman” should be treated? She boldly poses this question

to a crowd filled with white men and women, gathered to fight for “women’s” rights.

Moving past that paragraph, it is then written that she says “then they talk about this thing

in the head” - alluding to intellect, as someone from the audience seems to point out. I found this
addition to this version interesting. Although, we may never know which version of the two

written speeches is the most accurate, it is telling to see the ways in which her voice and way of

speaking is interpreted in different (and almost, contrasting) manners in each version. This

version seems to highlight Truth’s lack of education, with her not being able to recall what the

word for “intellect” is and referring to it as “this thing in the head”. It’s interesting that this is

done with the omission of the “I can’t read but I can hear” statement that was written in the

Anti-Slavery Bugle’s ​1851 version​. ​At the end of this speech, like seen in the previous version,

she refers to religion and bible texts to effectively convey her point about Jesus coming from

God and a woman, with no man having a part in that.

Interpretation:

Sojourner Truth, in the spirit of many black rhetors in America, uses a lot of different

rhetorical strategies to bring meaning to her ideas and opinions in order to effectively get her

point across to her immediate audience. She does this through the use of intermediate stylistic

patterns like polysyndeton, hypotaxis, repetition, and religious analogies. This speech was made

by a black woman, in a room full of white people coming together for a change in distribution of

rights. I found it important to focus on not one, but both of the most referred to versions of her

speech because, the differing manners in which they were recorded brings insight into what the

recorder’s intentions may have been, in my opinion. For example, Frances Gage the president of

the women’s rights convention in 1851, where Truth gave her world famous speech, not only

recorded this speech 12 years later but recorded Truth as having a southern dialect. It is noted on

her memorial committee page however that Truth had never in fact “lived in the south, and if
anything, would have had a Dutch accent, as Dutch was her first language.” (Sojourner Truth

Memorial Committee).

According to the Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee, the day Truth gave this speech

was the day that several male ministers had inserted themselves into the conversation taking

place at the Women’s Rights Convention in Ohio. They had come bearing hateful gifts,

delivering arguments that claimed that “women were weak, men were intellectually superior to

women, Jesus was a man, and [their] first mother sinned.” (Sojourner Truth Memorial

Committee). Truth, being in the audience that all of this hate was being spewed at, took it upon

herself to give a rebuttal through the use of a scalding pot of receipts (I like think that Sojourner

Truth invented shade, before reality tv). Truth uses polysyndeton and repetition when describing

how she too plows and reaps and husks like men, in order to emphasize, in great detail, the

difference in labor that is associated with women and men in her time period, and specifically

between white women and black women. Sojourner Truth, being a former slaves, ties her

narrative to her argument by mentioning all of the backbreaking labor she was forced to do

because of the color of her skin (Davis, 1971, pg. 12 & 15). Truth plowed ​and reaped ​and planted

and gathered, day and night - as a black woman was expected to do at in her time. She compares

it to that of the labor that most men do, black men and white men alike. Through this, she

emphasizes her strength and dignity while simultaneously disproving the idea of gender

essentialism that these male ministers had brought forth and tried to enforce on the convention

audience. The repetition of the words “and” (in previous lines) along with the alliteration of the

sound “ed” at the end of the verbs, are used to showcase and emphasize her building frustration

with the actions she’s describing and the actual repetition of the activities expected of her to do.
Even through all of this, she beared children - thirteen of them, to be exact. Five of whom she

was able to keep and watch grow into adulthood. She talks about being a mother and the very

real and all too common aspect of life of as a slave woman of dealing with your children being

sold, never to be seen again (David, 1971, pg. 10) . This way of forcing the audience to take in

the atrocities that she’s had to face not only as a black slave but also as a woman, highlighting

intersectionality and the role it plays in understanding a narrative of oppression and pushing to

form a better movement towards equality.

Hypotaxis is used in this speech to move a narrative along, for example when she

describes how “she can’t read, but she can hear, so she’s heard and learned from the bible

that…” She uses this technique to properly frame the idea that although she is uneducated when

it comes to reading and writing, she is educated when it comes to morality. This allows for her to

bring in religious analogies, like many other black rhetors we have studied, to further make a

point about how important women are in the world we live in. The allusion to religion is

something that is highlighted in both versions of the speech. Religion is something that black

rhetors always found to be most effective to use when bringing up the idea of “hope”(see Jupiter

Hammon in “An Address to the Negroes in the state of New York”). Truth uses this same

rhetorical strategy when addressing the comparison of Eve and all women of her generation. She

very clearly states that Jesus was not a product of man, but a product of God and a woman, and if

this is the case then women must be a lot more powerful than men allow them to be. She also

uses religion to tackle the claims made by the ministers that their “first mother sinned.” She asks

the audience that if Eve’s sin was big enough to shape our world then why not allow women to

undo the wrong doings by giving them the right and opportunity to do so.
 I find it interesting the way she frames “the men” who hold the power to give women

equal rights. For example, like stated in the description section, she refers to men as “poor men”

and “children” as if to taunt their unwillingness to compromise for the sake of morality and

equality. “Poor men” specifically is an ironic and almost hyperbolic label that she uses

repeatedly towards the end of her speech, almost as if to hold her ground as the strong (as strong

as a man) woman she first claims to be at the beginning of her speech. The use of this rhetoric is

not similarly conveyed in both versions of this speech. For example, “poor men” is only

mentioned in the ​Anti-Slavery Bugle ​version; The version I believe to be the most accurate,

considering how soon after the speech it was recorded. When internalizing the fact that

Sojourner Truth wasn’t a southern woman, with a southern accent - it’s very difficult for me to

analyze the Francis Gage version of the speech without sensing, the all too familiar,

misrepresentation and stereotyping of a black woman by her white counterpart (Beal, 2008).

There is no information, at least none that I’ve found, on why Gage chose to record Truth as

having a southern accent with southern idioms. In fact in 1858 during an anti-slavery meeting, an

group of people is said to have taunted her ​“claiming that she must be a man because no woman

could speak as well as she”( Iowa State University - The AA Studies Program, 1996). ​It begs the

question that, if this is how the president of this convention interpreted Truth’s way of speaking,

then this is who she saw her as. Another older, southern, black woman using the little amount of

vocabulary she had to try to address a crowd - giving Sojourner Truth less credit than she

deserved. This puts into perspective the crowd to which she was delivering this speech to, Truth

knowing that she’s a black woman with multiple targets on her back would not stand up in front
of a white crowd filled with people unwilling to listen and speak in a “plain talk” tone that only

southern African Americans would speak in - to one another, to be specific..

Evaluation:

Sojourner Truth is described as being “the person most responsible during the nineteenth

century for linking abolition and women’s rights.” (Guy-Sheftall, 2011, pg. 35). She effectively

conveys her pain, frustration, and wittiness to her audience by giving her speech through a

narrative of her own with ties leading back to religion, intersectionality, and various rhetorical

strategies. By using these techniques, Truth effectively demonstrates and portrays her hardships

as a black woman in the movement. Given the setting in which ​she’s giving this speech, she is

doing all she can to portray the frustration of many women of color at the time who felt

unrepresented and unvalued. As a freed slave and resident of the United States at a time when

political reform was taking place and resistance to the status quo was rising, she used the only

way she knew how to communicate to insert herself in a conversation. A conversation that was

taking place without the inclusion of her perspective. She spoke in a non threatening way, with

no use of jargon but rather her own tone. And in Francis Gage’s account, with african-american

southern idioms. During a time period where black women were executed for attempting to fight

back the system that oppressed them (see Angela Davis’s The Black Woman’s Role in the

Community of Slaves, pg. 9), Truth fought for what she felt was right. The constant

misrepresentation of black women and women of color in the women's suffrage movement at the

time, didn’t make the movement a women’s issue, but a white woman’s issue.

One of the most treasured and invaluable writers I have been so privileged to have

learned about, Audre Lorde, took it upon herself to mirror the way in Truth fought, by
challenging the ​movement she identified with, through her poetry. Lorde a black lesbian feminist

poet, delivered a speech at a conference in New York University in 1979 called, “The Master’s

Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House.” She stood in front of an audience of white

peers, fighting for equality for women during the second wave of feminism and forced them to

be introspective about their true intentions and the ways they had gone about achieving their

goal. She scolded her audience for their lack of inclusivity and asked them, “What does it mean

when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It

means that only the most narrow parameters of change are possible and allowable.” (Lorde,

1979, pg. 1). This draws so many parallels to the words of Sojourner Truth.

By ignoring the excruciating experiences of black women who were slaves (or former

slaves) these suffragette leaders, in Sojourner Truth’s wave of feminism, were essentially leading

a hypocritical movement and perpetuating the same oppressive tools used by men towards them.

Truth emphasized her role as a slave to not only show her strength and resilience but to show the

unfair treatment and expectation set on black women that weren’t set on white women. She then

highlighted her painful experiences as a mother, emphasizing her femininity and role in society

as compared to white women. These two experiences combined, showcased the magnitude of

oppression black women faced in America at the time and forces the movement to look at itself

in the mirror to face its flaws. Truth, regardless of what was at stake, and the grave danger she

was putting herself in by standing in front of these people (on her own as a black woman)

effectively inserted herself, her voice, her opinion, and her perspective in a place where it was

not being taken into account. This has mapped out a blueprint for many other black feminists,
and has given us encouragement to speak up when being silenced. It’s so important to look back

at these instances in history, as lesson plans for the future.

Conclusion:

The issues of lack of inclusivity within spaces is something I as a black woman have

dealt with all my life, and will most likely continue to deal with for the rest of my life. Learning

and doing research about women like Sojourner Truth, Audre Lorde, and Chimamanda Ngozi

Adichie sets forth a precedent and an example of the ways in which I am capable of fighting

back racism and ignorance within movements around me. Sojourner Truth highlighted the ways

in which intersectionality should be taken into account in the fight for women’s rights, by

standing out from a crowd, and pushing for reform in a place where she was not even respected

as a human. For my Women’s Studies class, we were asked to do an art project reflecting on

something we had learned about in the classroom that had an impact on us. I chose to do a video

project on intersectionality by interviewing my three female roommates, who respectively come

from three different backgrounds (separate from each others and from that of my own) about

feminism and the ways in which they felt it had an impact on their lives. My project focused on

each of their intersectionalities, and the feminist movement’s recognition or lack of recognition

of their differences. I interviewed these women because I felt that, they had never been asked to

insert themselves into the conversation taking place on their behalf. I was able to offer them a

platform to talk about the issues pertaining to each and every one of their experiences, with no

room for judgement. These are the things I have taken away from powerful women like

Sojourner Truth. Through black women activists before me, I am able to feel validated enough to
work on projects that elevate women around me, who have been shut down and silenced. Truth

has set forth a precedent, for all black women and women of color to keep pushing for inclusion

especially in places where we feel the most uncomfortable and vulnerable. As for my video

project, my professor informed me that it is now being used as a rubric and reference point for a

final project, based on my creation, that she’s added to the curriculum. For that, I can thank

Sojourner Truth for setting an example for all women whose voices deserve to be heard.
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