[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 20 (Tuesday, March 1, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
   SOJOURNER TRUTH: A LIFELONG COMMITMENT TO THE EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN

                                 ______


                         HON. JAMES L. OBERSTAR

                              of minnesota

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, March 1, 1994

  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I join in congratulating the gentleman 
from Ohio [Mr. Stokes] for summoning us in the Congress and our fellow 
Americans nationwide to reflect, once again, on the accomplishments of 
African-Americans through this special order he has reserved to pay 
tribute to Black History Month.
  Many eloquent and deeply moving tributes have been offered in the 
course of this special order, reminding us of an extraordinary range of 
exceptional contributions by African-Americans to the culture, 
technology, industry, agriculture, the arts, and the sciences in this 
great Nation of ours. I would like to offer another dimension--not a 
work of mine, but that of my daughter, Anne-Therese Oberstar, now a 
junior at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, where she is 
majoring in justice and peace studies and in Spanish. Her paper, 
entitled ``Ain't I a Woman? Sojourner Truth--A Leader for Women and 
African-Americans'' was a semester-long project to which she most 
earnestly and enthusiastically devoted herself as part of a course on 
African-American history.
  The inspiring life story of Sojourner Truth, a 19th-century slave who 
fought for an end to slavery and freedom for all women, is one of the 
most moving and powerfully evocative stories of its kind that I have 
read, and most certainly an inspiration for all of us in this great 
Nation of ours who have benefited from her lifelong dedication to 
emancipation of both blacks and women by changing the hearts of all 
people.
  I commend to my colleagues and to all who will read these Black 
History Month special orders this inspirational account of Sojourner 
Truth.

   Ain't I a Woman? Sojourner Truth--A Leader for Women and African-
                               Americans

                       (By Anne-Therese Oberstar)


                            ain't i a woman?

       `Well chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be 
     something out o' kilter. I tink dat `twixt de niggers of de 
     Souf and de women at de Norf all a talkin' 'bout rights, de 
     white men will be a fix pretty soon. But what's all dis here 
     talkin' 'bout? Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be 
     helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to have 
     de de best place every whar. Nobody eber help me into 
     carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best place, 
     and ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! (And she 
     bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her tremendous 
     muscular power) 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 it), 
     and bear the lash as well--and ain't I a woman? I have borne 
     thirteen chilern and seen 'em mos' all sold off into slavery, 
     and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus 
     heard--and ain't I a woman? * * * Den dat little man in black 
     dar, he say women can't have as much rights as man, cause 
     Christ warn't a woman. Whar did your Christ come from? From 
     God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him * * * if de 
     furst woman God eber made was strong enough to turn the world 
     upside down, all 'lone, dese togedder, ought to be able to 
     turn it back and get it right side up agin, and now dey is 
     asking to do it, de men better let 'em' (p 133-5, Truth)
       This was the speech of Sojourner Truth, the fiery women's 
     rights advocate--an early suffragist and equal opportunity 
     activist for both women and African Americans. Sojourner 
     Truth's famous words of 1851, given at a women's rights 
     conference in Akron, Ohio, have remained an inspiration to 
     women's movements everywhere, defying all different periods 
     of time.
       Admired by many and looked to as one of the ``gurus'' of 
     the women's rights movement, Sojourner Truth started her path 
     in life as a slave, ``humble beginnings'' as she called them 
     in her own narrative called ``Narrative of Sojourner Truth.'' 
     Born to James and Elizabeth Bomefree in about 1797 in Hurley, 
     Ulster County, New York, Truth was given the name Isabella 
     Bomefree. She was one of the slaves of Colonel Ardinburgh, 
     who died while she was an infant. Eventually, in 1810, she 
     was sold to John Dumont of New Paltz, who remained her 
     longtime master. On this plantation she was married to an 
     older slave named Thomas, who also belonged to Dumont, with 
     whom she had five children. Although her children had been 
     sold away in slavery, including one illegally after 
     their freedom had been declared, none of them were sold 
     permanently and she was eventually reunited with all of 
     them. In her speech, when she describes having thirteen of 
     her own children sold off to slavery, she is actually 
     referring to her mother, Mau-Mau Bett's, experience, who 
     had lost around ten or twelve children to slavery.
       Truth had three pivotal, life-changing experiences during 
     the year 1826-27, the year before she became free legally by 
     New York State law. The first of those events began in 1826, 
     when she boldly walked off the Dumont plantation, procuring 
     her own freedom, and found employment with Maria and Isaac 
     Van Wagenen, with whom she worked for the remainder of the 
     year. She left her children in the case of their father on 
     the plantation until she could secure a place for them to 
     live and money to clothe and feed them. Dumont had previously 
     boasted to other plantation owners how Isabella was better 
     than a male slave--``she would work all day in the fields and 
     then stay up all night doing the laundry and cleaning'' 
     (Gilbert, xxxvii). However, he discovered a very different 
     Isabella when, in 1826, ``after promising to release her from 
     bondage following a year of particularly hard labor, he 
     reneged on his pledge and one day arose to find her gone'' 
     (Gilbert, xxxvii). She had finally discovered that after 
     years of trusting her owner, she could no longer continue to 
     believe in his promises. She had gained monumental insight 
     into the facade which slavery had built.
       After leaving the Dumont plantation, she discovered that 
     her youngest child, Peter, was illegally sold and transported 
     by Dumont into perpetual slavery in Alabama. Desperate to 
     find her son before he was lost to her eternally, Truth 
     poured her story out to Ulster County Quakers, whom she 
     convinced to help her fight in court for her son's return. 
     Rare as it was for a former slave to sue a former owner, it 
     was rarer still for a former slave to win. Truth undauntedly 
     challenged her former master saying, ``I'll have my child 
     again'' (Gilbert, 45). It was through this heartwrenching 
     struggle that Truth determined she could fight against 
     slavery and win. When she was asked what she felt inside 
     after this victory, she said, ``Why, I felt so tall within--I 
     felt as if the power of a nation was with me'' (Gilbert, 45). 
     She found the strength, courage and power to make a 
     difference and not be ``one of slavery's passive victims. She 
     was willing to take the initiative and go to extraordinary 
     lengths to secure her rights, no matter how circumscribed'' 
     (Carney, 1148). Truth found that she had something to fight 
     for and nothing was going to get in her way; her second 
     pivotal experience-realization of the passion inside for 
     creating the opportunity to have equality.
       Truth's spirituality had always been a strong influence in 
     her life, she had learned of God through her mother's 
     teachings. She had depended on God throughout all of the 
     trials which she encountered. During this turbulent year, 
     Truth underwent a ``conversion experience, in which she 
     recognized Jesus as her `intercessor' to the more remote 
     figure of God'' (Carney, 1148), which she had learned from 
     her mother. This conversion was the most significant change 
     in her life; she came to understand the power and compassion 
     of God which was unknown to her before.
       Truth had previously held the belief that God was a great 
     man, superior to other men and lived in the sky. She believed 
     that he saw and took note of all her actions, similar to her 
     own master's record. She did not realize that God knew her 
     thoughts before she spoke them aloud. After living quite 
     contentedly with the Van Wagenens, she had forgotten 
     about. God, for she no longer needed him. However, Truth 
     discovered God's true greatness when she says that God 
     granted her a vision, revealing himself to her ``with all 
     the suddenness of a flash of lightning, showing her, `in 
     the twinkling of an eye, that he was all over'--`that he 
     pervaded the universe'--`and there was no place where God 
     was not''' (Gilbert, 65). She was instantly aware of her 
     great sin in forgetting the ``Almighty'' and waited in 
     fear, believing that she would be annihilated by him. A 
     short time later, Sojourner had another vision in which 
     she found Jesus, from whom ``love flowed as from a 
     fountain'' (Gilbert, 69), and discovered that his 
     transcendent power was as familiar as a friend, her fear 
     and terror of God melted into awe and joy. This third and 
     most important event led her to preaching.
       While living in New York, Truth joined the predominantly 
     white John Street Methodist Church and the black African 
     Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Her religious faith and the 
     belief that she was part of a larger struggle of a ``nation'' 
     of black people empowered her preaching. Her reputation grew 
     as an inspired, gifted preacher and visionary during the 
     Second Great Awakening. During this time, Sojourner made a 
     living by taking in washing and doing housework. In 1843, she 
     began to feel tired of city life and the never ending drive 
     to earn and unsuccessfully save money. She began to grow 
     increasingly depressed and ``apalled by her own lack of 
     charity to the poor'' (Carney, 1148).
       About this time, she heard God call her Sojourner Truth and 
     command her to take to the streets to preach the ``Good 
     News''. She left New York, setting out towards the East, 
     speaking at religious ``camp meetings'' and ended up in 
     Connecticut. She took her new name and preaching on the road 
     at a time when hundreds of Northerners ``heard God command 
     them to go out and preach their message'' (Carney, 1149), 
     this was the Second Great Awakening. It was also at a time 
     when large numbers of people throughout the North East were 
     particularly receptive to ``wandering, unlettered, itinerant 
     preachers of many sorts and both sexes'' (Carey, 1149). 
     Sojourner fit this description perfectly in that Sojourner 
     literally means ``itinerant preacher'' or temporary visitor 
     and telling the truth was her God given mission.
       Truth eventually made her way to the Utopian Northamption 
     Association, a group who desired the regeneration of the 
     world through reform of the political economy. Although she 
     took no interest in political and economic reform, it was 
     there that Sojourner truly and completely embraced 
     abolitionism and equality for women. She was fortunate to 
     meet and become greatly influenced by William Lloyd Garrison 
     and Frederick Douglass. When she left the commune in the late 
     1840's, she joined the antislavery lecture circuit, becoming 
     one of the most renowned preachers of her time.
       Connecting emotion and self-empowerment to the strength of 
     a nation struggling for freedom and equality, Truth was able 
     to sway people to her side by force of peaceful action and 
     words, instead of anger, hatred and violence. She fought hard 
     for the equality of both women and blacks without 
     relinquishing one issue for improvement on the other. Many 
     abolitionists put aside the issues pertaining to the rights 
     of women so they could gain ground for the rights of blacks, 
     Sojourner never turned her back on the women's suffragist 
     movement. She forced people to ask of themselves why give 
     rights to only a few people, is this not what slavery has 
     done? Freedom for a select few? She asserted that if women 
     were not given the same rights as men, there would still only 
     be freedom for a select few. Truth believed that women of all 
     races and economic backgrounds were slaves, and demanded 
     that the category of ``woman'' be extended to ``include 
     not only those who were treated as ladies but those who, 
     enslaved, could not protect their children'' (Carney, 
     1150).
       Frederick Douglass, a prominent black abolitionist, 
     believed that Reconstruction was the ``Negro's hour'', as he 
     called it, and that women should not ``imperil black suffrage 
     by insisting on women's suffrage immediately'' (Douglass, 
     67). Most male and black abolitionists agreed with him. 
     Sojourner sided with her white sisters in the quest for the 
     deletion of the word ``male'' from the Fourteenth Amendment. 
     At an equal rights convention in 1867, Truth noted that in 
     all of the debates concerning enfranchising black men, no one 
     had considered black women. Truth debated that if only black 
     men were enfranchised and not women, ``colored men will be as 
     masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was 
     before'' (Stanton, Vol. 2, 193). Sojourner believed that 
     equality of all people could be achieved solely through 
     inclusion.
       It was in 1851 that Sojourner Truth gave her famous ``Ain't 
     I A Woman'' speech and defending all women, silencing, with 
     piercing words, the men who previously had been trouncing 
     women, disregarding them as simple-minded dependents who 
     needed men to take care of them. Sojourner, the only black 
     woman at the meeting, was enraged that these pompous 
     ministers had the audacity to call women unintelligent; weak 
     and frail; temptresses, as Eve had ``tempted'' Adam into 
     original sin; and, finally, claiming that women can't have as 
     many rights as a man because Jesus was a man, not a woman 
     (what does this have to do with women's ability to vote or 
     not?). Truth boldly (for she was not an invited speaker) 
     answered their absurd claims, while the white women, too 
     timid and shy to enter into a debate, sat back and let her 
     fight for them. ``I could work as much as a man and bear the 
     lash as well and ain't I a woman?'', she asserted, defeating 
     their claims that women are frail. To their absurd attack 
     that women are not rightfully equal because Jesus was a man, 
     Sojourner said, ``Whar did your Christ come from? From God 
     and a woman--man had nothing to do with him''. In response to 
     the judgement of women by Eve, Sojourner bellowed ``If de 
     furst woman God eber made was strong enough to turn the world 
     upside down, all `lone * * * women ought to be able to turn 
     it back and get it right side up again''. Identifying with 
     women of all classes and colors, Sojourner forced her 
     opposition to accept the humanity and equality of all women, 
     and all people--not just one specific sect.
       In 1858, speaking before an audience in Silver Lake, 
     Indiana, Truth was forced to prove her sexual identity by 
     baring her breasts after some of the men present claimed that 
     she was a man, betting money on it. When the doctor insulted 
     her friends by asking them to examine her breast, Sojourner 
     quietly asked why they didn't believe she was a woman. The 
     doctor said it was because her voice was the voice of a man, 
     not a woman (wonderful logic--of course, she's not a woman 
     because she has a deep voice--how could anyone think 
     differently?). In response, Sojourner told them that:
       ``her breasts had suckled many a white babe, to the 
     exclusion of her own offspring; that some of those white 
     babies had grown to man's estate; that although they had 
     suckled her colored breasts, they were, in her estimation, 
     far more manly than they (her persecutors) appeared to be; 
     and she quietly asked them, as she disrobed her breasts, if 
     they too wished to suck! In vindication of her truthfulness, 
     she told them that she would show her breasts to the whole 
     congregation; that it was not to her shame that she uncovered 
     her breasts, but to their shame'' (Gilbert, 139).
       Truth was expressing her desire to tell the world that she 
     was a woman; that woman can mean power and strength, not just 
     beauty and frailty. Sojourner saw that women can be ugly and 
     beautiful, hateful and loving, dirty and pure, wild and tame. 
     Women, she asserted, should not be ashamed of anything, least 
     of all being a woman. She fought for their freedom to express 
     the raging emotions entrapped within their ``china doll'' 
     bodies. Women are more than pretty things to look at, more 
     than a night's enjoyment to be thrown away when man has had 
     his fill. Sojourner wanted to empower women. She wanted 
     people to see that women have the ability to change the world 
     and deserve the chance to influence the course of history, 
     beyond giving birth to its ``leaders'' (which women do not 
     always even get the oh-so-desireable acknowledgement!).
       Sojourner Truth found that the most effective means of 
     creating peace in the world was through action. Her focal 
     point became the women's movement, entrenched in black 
     issues. She embraced a life-philosophy similar to Ghandi's 
     satyagraha--power of the heart and soul to change others 
     hearts. She deeply desired the abolition of slavery and the 
     enforcement of equality for women, however, she strongly 
     ``voiced her opposition to the use of force to effect 
     emancipation (for both blacks and women) and she insisted 
     that only a change of heart on the part of the whites and men 
     (of all colors) would ensure liberty'' (Cooney, p. 30) in the 
     future and an end to prejudice for blacks and women. She 
     lived her life believing in the power of God and the power of 
     a pure heart fighting for a pure cause, never changing her 
     philosophy in light of the ever-evolving kaleidoscopoe, 
     called society.
       Her memory and achievements remain an inspiration to many. 
     Her simple question, ``Ain't I A Woman?'' echos many others; 
     is there still violence towards women?; are women still 
     oppressed--sexually, physically, emotionally, mentally?; in 
     essence, has equality for women been at all advanced? These 
     questions still need to be answered. Sojourner Truth helped 
     move a seemingly immovable force, made a difference and 
     showed others along the way that their voice counts too. 
     There is still hope for the future. We, women of the 
     twentieth century, answer her haunting question. Yes!, 
     Sojourner you are woman!!!


                              works cited

       Cooney, Robert, ed. ``The Power of the People.'' New 
     Society Publishers, Philadelphia, PA, 1987.
       Douglass, Frederick. ``Life and Times of Frederick 
     Douglass.'' 1892. Reprinted. New York, NY: Bonanza Books, 
     1962.
       Gilbert, Olive. ``Narrative of Sojourner Truth; A 
     Bondswoman of Olden Time: With a History of Her Labors and 
     Correspondence Drawn from Her Book of Life.'' Originally 
     published, 1850. Reprint. Oxford University Press, Inc., New 
     York, New York, 1991.
       Hine, Darlene Clark, ed. ``Black Women in America: An 
     Historical Encyclopedia Vol. II, M-Z.'' Carlson Publishing 
     Inc., Brooklyn, NY, 1993. p. 792, 1172-1176, 1312.
       Linthwaite, Illona, ed. ``Aint I A Woman! A Book of Women's 
     Poetry From Around the World.'' Peter Bedrick Books, New 
     York, New York, 1990. p. 129-30.
       Smith, Jessie Carney ed. ``Notable Black American Women.'' 
     Gale Research Inc., Detroit, MI, 1992. p. 1147-1151.
       Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, ed. ``History of Woman Suffrage.'' 
     2 vols. Fowler and Wells, New York, NY, 1881-82.

                          ____________________