"Разве я не женщина?" (Razve ya ne zhenshchina?)

1851 speech by Sojourner Truth

"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 contemporary newspapers, and a transcript of the speech was published in the Anti Slavery Bugle on June 21, 1851. It received wider publicity in 1863 during the American Civil War when Frances Dana Barker Gage published a different version, one which became known as Ain't I a Woman?, because of its oft repeated question. 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 as well. Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree, in 1797 in Ulster County, New York. Truth ran from her master in 1827 after he went back on his promise of her freedom. She became a preacher and an activist throughout the 1840s–1850s. She delivered her speech, "Ain't I a Woman? ", at the Women's Rights Convention in 1851. Truth questions the treatment of white women compared to Black women. Seemingly pointing out a man in the room, Truth says, "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere." In the Gage version, she exclaims that no one ever does any of these things for her, repeating the question, "And ain't I a woman?" several times. She says that she has worked and birthed many children, making her as much a woman as anyone else. Despite giving birth to children just like white women did, black women were not treated with the same respect as white women. Black women were women, but because their race was seen as inferior, being a woman did not mean much if they were not white. There is no official published version of her speech; many rewritings of it were published anywhere from one month to 12 years after it was spoken.

The phrase "Am I not a man and a brother?" had been used by British abolitionists since the late 18th century to decry the inhumanity of slavery. This male motto was first turned female in the 1820s by British abolitionists, then in 1830 the American abolitionist newspaper Genius of Universal Emancipation carried an image of a slave woman asking "Am I not a woman and a sister?" The first complete transcription, titled "On Woman's Rights", was published on June 21 in the Anti Slavery Bugle by Marius Robinson, an abolitionist and newspaper editor who acted as the convention's recording secretary. Robinson was in the audience during Truth's original speech. The question "Ain't I a Woman?" does not appear in his account. Truth's style of speech was not like that of Southern slaves; she was born and raised in New York, and spoke only Dutch until she was nine years old. Additions that Gage made to Truth's speech include the ideas that she could bear the lash as well as a man, that no one ever offered her the traditional gentlemanly deference due a woman, and that most of her 13 children were sold away from her into slavery. Truth is widely believed to have had five children, with one sold away, and was never known to claim more children. Further inaccuracies in Gage's 1863 account conflict with her own contemporary report: Gage wrote in 1851 that Akron in general and the press in particular were largely friendly to the woman's rights convention, but in 1863 she wrote that the convention leaders were fearful of the "mobbish" opponents. This is a reprint of Gage's version without the heavy dialect or her interjected comments. In her introduction to the work, she includes that the speech has survived because it was written by Gage.