Sojourner Truth (born Isabella “Belle” Baumfree) was an American abolitionist and women’s rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God had called her to leave the city and go into the countryside “testifying the hope that was in her”.
Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title “Ain’t I a Woman?“, a variation of the original speech re-written by someone else using a stereotypical Southern dialect, whereas Sojourner Truth was from New York and grew up speaking Dutch as her first language.
During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for formerly enslaved people (summarized as the promise of “forty acres and a mule”). She continued to fight on behalf of women and African Americans until her death. A memorial bust of Truth was unveiled in 2009 in Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol Visitor’s Center. She is the first African American woman to have a statue in the Capitol building.
Here are some of the best quotes from Sojourner Truth.
- “Absurdity of the claims so arrogantly set up by the masters, over beings designed by God to be as free as kings; and at the perfect stupidity of the slave, in admitting for one moment the validity of these claims.” – Sojourner Truth
- “And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery and when I cried out with my mother’s grief none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?” – Sojourner Truth
- “And what is that religion that sanctions, even by its silence, all that is embraced in the ‘peculiar institution’? if there can be anything more diametrically opposed to the religion of Jesus, than the working of this soul-killing system – which is as truly sanctioned by the religion of America as are her minsters and churches – we wish to be shown where it can be found.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Because of them I can now live the dream. I am the seed of the free, and I know it. I intend to bear great fruit.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Children, who made your skin white? Was it not God? Who made mine black? Was it not the same God? Am I to blame, therefore, because my skin is black? … Does not God love colored children as well as white children? And did not the same savior die to save the one as well as the other?” – Sojourner Truth
- “Christ came from God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him.” – Sojourner Truth
- “God will take care of the poor trampled slave, but where will the slaveholder be when eternity begins?” – Sojourner Truth
- “I am a woman’s rights. I have as much as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?” – Sojourner Truth
- “I am above eighty years old … I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked.” – Sojourner Truth
- “I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all.” – Sojourner Truth
- “I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring. Because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.” – Sojourner Truth
- “I am glad to see that men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and while the water is stirring, I will step into the pool.” – Sojourner Truth
- “I am not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star.” – Sojourner Truth
- “I can do as much work as any man… We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. What we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights, we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough of our own.” – Sojourner Truth
- “I did not run away, I walked away by daylight…” – Sojourner Truth
- “I don’t read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations. I can see through a millstone, though I can’t see through a spelling-book. What a narrow idea a reading qualification is for a voter!” – Sojourner Truth
- “I feel safe even in the midst of my enemies; for the truth is powerful and will prevail.” – Sojourner Truth
- “I have done a great deal of work, as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay… We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much.” – Sojourner Truth
- “I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me. And aren’t I a woman?” – Sojourner Truth
- “I know and do what is right better than many big men who read.” – Sojourner Truth
- “I must sojourn once to the ballot-box before I die. I hear the ballot-box is a beautiful glass globe, so you can see all the votes as they go in. Now, the first time I vote I’ll see if the woman’s vote looks any different from the rest-if it makes any stir or commotion. If it don’t inside, it need not outside.” – Sojourner Truth
- “I tell you I can’t read a book, but I can read de people.” – Sojourner Truth
- “I’m not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star.” – Sojourner Truth
- “If it is not a fit place for women, it is unfit for men to be there.” – Sojourner Truth
- “If my cup won’t hold but a pint and yourn holds a quart, wouldn’t ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?” – Sojourner Truth
- “If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.” – Sojourner Truth
- “If the Lord comes and burns – as you say he will – I am not going away; I am going to stay here and stand the fire, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! And Jesus will walk with me through the fire and keep me from harm.” – Sojourner Truth
- “If women want rights more than they got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it.” – Sojourner Truth
- “It is hard for the old slave holding spirit to die. But die it must.” – Sojourner Truth
- “It is the mind that makes the body.” – Sojourner Truth
- “It is written that there shall be a separation, and the sheep shall be separated from the goats. The other preachers have the sheep; I have the goats. And I have a few sheep among my goats, but they are very ragged.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Let others say what they will of the efficacy of prayer, I believe in it, and I shall pray. Thank god! yes, I shall always pray.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Let… individuals make the most of what God has given them, have their neighbors do the same, and then do all they can to serve each other. There is no use in one man, or one nation, to try to do or be everything. It is a good thing to be dependent on each other for something, it makes us civil and peaceable.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Look there above the center, where the flag is waving bright; we are going out of slavery, we are bound for freedom’s light; we mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight…” – Sojourner Truth
- “Many slaveholders boast of the love of their slaves. How would it freeze the blood of some of them to know what kind of love rankles in the bosoms of slaves for them! Witness the attempt to poison Mrs. Calhoun, and hundreds of similar cases. Most ‘surprising’ to everybody, because committed by slaves supposed to be so grateful for their chains.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Now, if you want me to get out of the world, you had better get the women votin’ soon. I shan’t go till I can do that.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Oh God, you know I have no money, but you can make the people do for me, and you must make the people do for me.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Oh no, honey, I can’t read little things like letters. I read big things like men.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff.” – Sojourner Truth
- “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?” – Sojourner Truth
- “The Lord gave me ‘Sojourner,’ because I was to travel up an’ down the land, showin’ the people their sins an’ bein’ a sign unto them. Afterwards, I told the Lord I wanted another name ’cause everybody else had two names, and the Lord gave me ‘Truth,’ because I was to declare the truth to people.” – Sojourner Truth
- “The Lord only knows how many times I let my children go hungry rather than take secretly the bread I liked not to ask for.” – Sojourner Truth
- “The rich rob the poor and the poor rob one another.” – Sojourner Truth
- “The slaveholders are terrible for promising to give you this or that, or such and such a privilege, if you will do thus and so, and when the time of fulfillment comes, and one claims the promise, they, forsooth, recollect nothing of the kind; and you are, like as not, taunted with being a liar.” – Sojourner Truth
- “The Spirit calls me, and I must go.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Then I will speak upon the ashes.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.” – Sojourner Truth
- “There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.” – Sojourner Truth
- “This is beautiful indeed; the colored people have given this to the head of the government, and that government once sanctioned laws that would not permit its people to learn enough to enable them to read this book.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Though it seems curious, I do not remember ever asking for anything but what I got it. And I always received it as an answer to my prayers.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Truth burns up error.” – Sojourner Truth
- “Truth is powerful and it prevails.” – Sojourner Truth
- “We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much.” – Sojourner Truth
- “We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we’d ever get up again; but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again, and now I am here.” – Sojourner Truth
- “What we give to the poor, we lend to the Lord.” – Sojourner Truth
- “When I got religion, I found some work to do to benefit somebody.” – Sojourner Truth
- “When I left the house of bondage I left everything behind. I wasn’t going to keep nothing of Egypt on me, an’ so I went to the Lord an’ asked him to give me a new name. And he gave me Sojourner because I was to travel up and down the land showing the people their sins and bein’ a sign unto them. I told the Lord I wanted two names ’cause everybody else had two, and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people.” – Sojourner Truth
- “When I preaches, I has just one text to preach from, an’ I always preaches from this one. My text is, ‘When I found Jesus.’” – Sojourner Truth
- “Where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon.” – Sojourner Truth
- “You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.” – Sojourner Truth
- “You may hiss as much as you please, but women will get their rights anyway.” – Sojourner Truth
