Sojourner Truth delivered her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech on May 29, 1851 at a women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio. When she approached the platform to speak, she asked if she could say a few words. Marius Robinson, a reporter, was in the audience and transcribed the speech. He published it in The Anti-Slavery Bugle. Twelve years later, Frances Gage republished the speech under a new title “Ain’t I a Woman?” The second speech is very different—from structure to tone to dialect. For instance, Gage falsely gave Truth a Southern accent with the dialect of those who were enslaved in the South, when in fact Truth was enslaved in New York.
Truth spent her life without knowing how to...
