Sojourner Truth and the Problem of the Sources

Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in New York around 1797 as Isabella Baumfree, escaped with her infant daughter in 1826, and became a celebrated preacher, abolitionist and women's rights speaker. In 1851 she spoke at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, arguing that she had worked as hard as any man and deserved equal rights. Her speech is famous as 'Ain't I a Woman?

', yet that version was published by Frances Dana Gage in 1863, twelve years later, and written in a heavy Southern dialect, though Truth grew up in New York speaking Dutch as her first language. An account printed in June 1851 by Marius Robinson, who attended, does not contain the famous refrain. Historians therefore treat the two versions differently while agreeing that Truth's speech linked race and gender in a powerful way. Her case shows why the date, author and purpose of a source matter, even for words everyone thinks they know.