"Ain't I a Woman?" by Sojourner Truth

The following oratory — laid out as a poem for your reading pleasure — is excerpted from Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” address, in the version published in 1863. The speech was originally delivered in the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

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 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 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!

+ Sojourner Truth