Sojourner Truth: How Did You Feel About Harriet Tubman?

Sojourner Truth was a born slave named Isabella, delivered her speech at a woman’s convention in Ohio in 1851. Women’s rights were a big issue but Black Women’s rights were in worse condition. She stood for feminism, racial equality and religion. She supported freedmen and corner preached about Evangelism after she understood the bible and Christianity more.

She was an abolitionist and women’s right’s activist and was born a slave in New York State. She bore around thirteen children and had three of them sold away from her. She became involved in supporting freed people during the Reconstruction Period.

In the speech ‘Ain’t I a Woman’, she mentions she has no rights as an African American woman. She hears how “women should be treated” and taken care of

I prayed and preached about women’s and black’s rights getting better and I’m sure it will in the future but it’ll never go away.You have to understand that that’s alright because you have to strive for better continually until you get what you want. Once you stop you are settling. There is always going to be injustice and you have to speak up about change if you truly want it.

Interviewer: How did you feel about Harriet Tubman?

Sojourner: I met her in Boston in 1864 and tried to explain to her that Abraham Lincoln wasn’t an enemy of black folk but she refused to believe it because he let black soldiers be paid less than white ones. She had a point but I feel like he’s a very nice man towards us because of the support he had for anti-slavery.

Interviewer: Who pushed you to be greater and why? Sojourner: Lucretia Mott was the greatest. She encouraged me to join the women’s rights movement. There was also Frances Dana Gage who gave me the line "Ar 'n 't I a Woman?" that made me famous and was really written to get it in people’s heads that just because I am black doesn’t mean I am not a woman also. Harriet Beecher Stowe also wrote an amazing essay about me that just touched my