Ain't I a Woman?

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"Ain't I a Woman?" is a speech, generally considered to have been delivered extemporaneously, by Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), born into slavery in the state of New York. Some time after gaining her freedom in 1827, she became a well-known anti-slavery speaker. Her speech was delivered at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, and did not originally have a title. The speech was briefly reported in two newspapers at the time, and a transcript was published in the Anti-Slavery Bugle on June 21, 1851. In 1863, during the American Civil War, Frances Dana Barker Gage published a significantly different version with speech more typical of southern African Americans. This version became known as "Ain't I a Woman?", because of its oft-repeated question (which does not appear in the earlier version). This later, better known and more widely available version was the one commonly referenced in popular culture and, until historian Nell Irvin Painter's 1996 biography of Truth, by historians...

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