About Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth challenged many of the long-held beliefs that white Americans held about slaves at her time. Truth was not a Southerner; she had been born and raised in New York to a Dutch slave-owning family. Truth was extremely religious and attributed many of her beliefs to the Christian God. She was a tall figure that demanded respect and captured the attention of others everywhere she went. And most importantly: Sojourner Truth was a woman – a woman and an ex-slave, two identities that white America had yet to realize could coincide in one being. 
Much of Truth’s story was manipulated and utilized by white women for their benefit – namely Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frances Dana Gage. Both Stowe’s and Gage’s accounts of Truth are sensationalized retellings meant to boost the two white women’s status as rivaling writers. It is widely accepted that Sojourner Truth’s nearly immortalized “Ain’t I A Woman” speech was most likely a fabrication conjured by Gage to sell her papers. Still, Sojourner Truth became a widely known public speaker. She toured the country giving speeches and addresses at different women’s rights and suffragist conventions. Truth regained control over her own voice and story, despite having been misrepresented by Stowe and Gage in the past.
Truth criticized the feminist suffragist movement for pushing ideals of white women’s femininity while criticizing the abolitionist movement for heralding black men’s rights.
“At a time when most Americans thought of slaves as male and women as white, Truth embodied a fact that is still repeating: among the blacks are women; among the women, there are blacks.” – Nell Irving Painter
She spoke vehemently for black women’s rights, arguing that black rights were not for black men, and women’s rights were not for white women. She combined both abolitionist and suffragist rhetoric to advocate for black women’s freedom and autonomy. Truth argued that black women were just as capable as men. As a slave, she had “plowed and planted and gathered into barns” (Painter 167) just as men had. As a woman, she had been married and born thirteen children. She was an ex-slave, a wife, and a mother all at the same time and because of these simultaneous accomplishments she demanded as much respect as any black man or white woman. Truth maintained a lot of influence in these movements, all while criticizing each movment’s shortcomings.