This is Sojourner Truth.⁣ ⁣

This is Sojourner Truth.⁣
⁣

In 1826, she managed to escape with her daughter and secure their freedom. Two years later, she took her former enslaver to court to get back her son. She won the case, making her the first Black woman to win against a white man in a court of law. Truth later went on to become an abolitionist and women's rights activist.⁣
⁣
She is probably best remembered for her famous speech, "Ain't I a Woman," which was later altered for publication by a white woman named Frances Gage who rewrote it in a stereotypical "southern Black slave dialect". ⁣
⁣
Here's an excerpt of the original version:⁣
⁣
"I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman's rights. [sic] I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now."⁣
⁣
Here's the altered version written by Gage:⁣
⁣
"Wall, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be somethin' out o' kilter. I tink dat... de womin at de Norf, all talkin' 'bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all dis here talkin' 'bout?⁣
⁣
Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place!" And raising herself to her full height, and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked. "And a'n't I a woman? Look at me!"⁣
⁣
Truth actually grew up speaking Dutch and did not have a southern dialect as she grew up in New York.⁣

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