Table of Contents
Sojourner Truth’s “ Ain’t I a Woman?”
Overview
Context
About the Author
Explanation and Analysis of the Document
Audience
Impact
Document Text
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Abstract
On May 29, 1851, a former slave named Sojourner Truth stood before a crowd at a Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, and spoke about human rights and gender equity. Her comments on the strength, intelligence, and character of women captured the audience’s attention and struck a particularly deep chord with the nineteenthcentury lecturer and coordinator of the convention, Frances Dana Gage. Truth’s speech is commonly referred to as the “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech.
Book contents
- John Rolfe’s Letter to Sir Edwin Sandys 1619/1620
- Virginia’s Act XII: Negro Women’s Children to Serve according to the Condition of the Mother 1662
- Virginia’s Act III: Baptism Does Not Exempt Slaves from Bondage 1667
- “A Minute against Slavery, Addressed to Germantown Monthly Meeting” 1688
- John Woolman’s Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes 1754
- Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation 1775
- Petition of Prince Hall and Other African Americans to the Massachusetts General Court 1777
- Pennsylvania: An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery 1780
- Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia 1784
- Slavery Clauses in the U.S. Constitution 1787
- Benjamin Banneker’s Letter to Thomas Jefferson 1791
- Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 1793
- Richard Allen: “An Address to Those Who Keep Slaves, and Approve the Practice” 1794
- Prince Hall: A Charge Delivered to the African Lodge 1797
- Ohio Black Code 1803–1807
- Peter Williams, Jr.’s “Oration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade” 1808
- Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm’s First Freedom’s Journal Editorial 1827
- David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the world 1829
- State v. Mann 1830
- William Lloyd Garrison’s First Liberator Editorial 1831
- The Confessions of Nat Turner 1831
- United States v. Amistad 1841
- Prigg v. Pennsylvania 1842
- Henry Highland Garnet: “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America” 1843
- William Wells Brown’s “Slavery As It Is” 1847
- First Editorial of the North Star 1847
- Roberts v. City of Boston 1850
- Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 1850
- Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself 1851
- Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” 1851
- Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” 1852
- Martin Delany: The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States 1852
- Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup 1853
- Dred Scott v. Sandford 1857
- John S. Rock’s “Whenever the Colored Man Is Elevated, It Will Be by His Own Exertions” 1858
- Virginia Slave Code 1860
- Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl 1861
- Osborne P. Anderson: A Voice from Harper’s Ferry 1861
- Emancipation Proclamation 1863
- Frederick Douglass: “Men of Color, To Arms!” 1863
- War Department General Order 143 1863
- Thomas Morris Chester’s Civil War Dispatches 1864
- William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 1865
- Black Code of Mississippi 1865
- Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution 1865
- Testimony before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction on Atrocities in the South against Blacks 1866
- Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution 1868
- Henry McNeal Turner’s Speech on His Expulsion from the Georgia Legislature 1868
- Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution 1870
- Ku Klux Klan Act 1871
- United States v. Cruikshank 1876
- Richard Harvey Cain’s “All That We Ask Is Equal Laws, Equal Legislation, and Equal Rights” 1874
- Civil Rights Cases 1883
- T. Thomas Fortune: “The Present Relations of Labor and Capital” 1886
- Anna Julia Cooper’s “Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race” 1864
- John Edward Bruce’s “Organized Resistance Is Our Best Remedy” 1889
- John L. Moore’s “In the Lion’s Mouth” 1891
- Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin’s “Address to the First National Conference of Colored Women” 1895
- Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Exposition Address 1895
- Plessy v. Ferguson 1896
- Mary Church Terrell: “The Progress of Colored Women” 1898
- Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s “Lynch Law in America” 1900
- George H. White’s Farewell Address to Congress 1901
- W. E. B. Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk 1903
- Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles 1905
- Theodore Roosevelt’s Brownsville Legacy Special Message to the Senate 1906
- Act in Relation to the Organization of a Colored Regiment in the City of New York 1913
- Monroe Trotter’s Protest to Woodrow Wilson 1914
- Guinn v. United States 1915
- William Pickens: “The Kind of Democracy the Negro Expects” 1918
- Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889–1918 1919
- Cyril Briggs’S Summary of the Program and Aims of the African Blood Brotherhood 1920
- Walter F. White: “The Eruption of Tulsa” 1921
- Marcus Garvey: “The Principles of the Universal Negro Improvement Association” 1922
- Alain Locke’s “Enter the New Negro” 1925
- James Weldon Johnson’s “Harlem: The Culture Capital” 1925
- Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson: “The Negro Woman and the Ballot” 1927
- John P. Davis: “A Black Inventory of the New Deal” 1935
- Robert Clifton Weaver: “The New Deal and the Negro: A Look at the Facts” 1935
- Charles Hamilton Houston’s “Educational Inequalities Must Go!” 1935
- Walter F. White’s “U.S. Department of (White) Justice” 1935
- Mary McLeod Bethune’s “What Does American Democracy Mean to Me?” 1939
- A. Philip Randolph’s “Call to Negro America to March on Washington” 1941
- To Secure These Rights 1947
- Executive Order 9981 1948
- Ralph J. Bunche: “The Barriers of Race Can Be Surmounted” 1949
- Sweatt v. Painter 1950
- Haywood Patterson and Earl Conrad’s Scottsboro Boy 1950
- Brown v. Board of Education 1954
- Marian Anderson’s My Lord, What a Morning 1956
- Roy Wilkins: “The Clock Will Not Be Turned Back” 1957
- George Wallace’s Inaugural Address as Governor 1963
- Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Letter from Birmingham Jail” 1963
- John F. Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address 1963
- Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I Have a Dream” 1963
- Civil Rights Act of 1964 1964
- Fannie Lou Hamer’s Testimony at the Democratic National Convention 1964
- Malcolm X: “After the Bombing” 1965
- Moynihan Report 1965
- South Carolina v. Katzenbach 1966
- Stokely Carmichael’s “Black Power” 1966
- Bond v. Floyd 1966
- Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” 1967
- Loving v. Virginia 1967
- Kerner Commission Report Summary 1968
- Eldridge Cleaver’s “Education and Revolution” 1969
- Jesse Owens’s Blackthink: My Life as Black Man And White Man 1970
- Angela Davis’s “Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation” 1971
- Clay v. United States 1971
- Jackie Robinson’s I Never Had it Made 1972
- Final Report of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study ad Hoc Advisory Panel 1973
- FBI Report on Elijah Muhammad 1973
- Shirley Chisholm: “The Black Woman in Contemporary America” 1974
- Thurgood Marshall’s Equality Speech 1978
- Jesse Jackson’s Democratic National Convention Keynote Address 1984
- Anita Hill’s Opening Statement at the Senate Confirmation Hearing of Clarence Thomas 1991
- A. Leon Higginbotham: “An Open Letter to Justice Clarence Thomas from a Federal Judicial Colleague” 1992
- Colin Powell’s Commencement Address at Howard University 1994
- Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March Pledge 1995
- One America in the 21st Century 1998
- Clarence Thomas’s Concurrence/Dissent in Grutter v. Bollinger 2003
- Barack Obama: “A More Perfect Union” 2008
- Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address 2009
- U.S. Senate Resolution Apologizing for the Enslavement and Racial Segregation of African Americans 2009
- Barack Obama’s Address to the NAACP Centennial Convention 2009