Ain't I A Women?

Ain't I A Women?

By Sojourner Truth
Poem Hunter.com
February 02, 2014

That man over there say,
a woman needs to be helped into carriages,
and lifted over ditches,
and to have the best place everywhere.

Nobody ever helped me into carriages,
or over mud puddles,
or gives me a best place...

And ain't I a woman?

Look at me!

Look at my arm!

I have plowed 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 to it,
and bear the lash as well,
and ain't I a woman?

I have born 13 children,
and seen most all sold into slavery,
and when I cried out a mother's grief,
none but Jesus heard me...

And ain't I a woman?

That little man in black there say,
a woman can't have as much rights as a man,
cause Christ wasn't a woman...

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,
together, women ought to be able to turn it,
right side up again.

Copyright © Sojourner Truth, 1852.



Sojourner Truth (/soʊˈdʒɜrnər ˈtruːθ/; c. 1797 – November 26, 1883)
was an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist.

Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York,
but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826.

After going to court to recover her son, she became the first
black woman to win such a case against a white man.

Born Isabella Baumfree, in 1843 she gave herself the name
Sojourner Truth.

Her best-known extemporaneous speech on gender inequalities,
"Ain't I a Woman?", was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's
Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for
the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to
secure land grants from the federal government for former
slaves.

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