thumb|right|200px|Sojourner Truth
"Ain't I a Woman?" is a speech, generally considered to have been delivered extemporaneously, by Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), born into slavery in the state of New York. Some time after gaining her freedom in 1827, she became a well-known anti-slavery speaker. Her speech was delivered at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, and did not originally have a title.
The speech was briefly reported in two newspapers at the time, and a transcript was published in the Anti-Slavery Bugle on June 21, 1851. In 1863, during the American Civil War, Frances Dana Barker Gage published a significantly different version with speech more typical of southern African Americans. This version became known as "Ain't I a Woman?", because of its oft-repeated question (which does not appear in the earlier version). This later, better known and more widely available version was the one commonly referenced in popular culture and, until historian Nell Irvin Painter's 1996 biography of Truth, by historians as well.
In her speech, Truth questions the treatment of white women compared to black women. Presumably pointing out a man in the room, Truth says, "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere." In the Gage version, she exclaims that no one ever does any of these things for her, repeating the question, "And ain't I a woman?" several times. She says that she has worked and birthed many children, making her as much a woman as anyone else. Despite giving birth to children just like white women did, black women were not treated with the same respect as white women. Black women were women, but because their race was seen as inferior, being a woman did not mean much if they were not white.
There is no official published version of her speech; many rewritings of it were published anywhere from one month to 12 years after it was spoken.
Background
The phrase "Am I not a man and a brother?" had been used by British abolitionists since the late 18th century to decry the inhumanity of slavery. This male motto was first turned female in the 1820s by British abolitionists, then in 1830 the American abolitionist newspaper Genius of Universal Emancipation carried an image of a slave woman asking "Am I not a woman and a sister?" The first complete transcription was published on June 21 in the Anti-Slavery Bugle by Marius Robinson, an abolitionist and newspaper editor who acted as the convention's recording secretary. Robinson was in the audience during Truth's original speech, and he went over his transcription with her before publishing it. The question "Ain't I a Woman?" does not appear in his account. Truth's style of speech was not like that of Southern slaves; she was born and raised in New York, and spoke only Dutch until she was nine years old.
Additions that Gage made to Truth's speech include the ideas that she could bear the lash as well as a man, that no one ever offered her the traditional gentlemanly deference due a woman, and that most of her 13 children were sold away from her into slavery. Truth is widely believed to have had five children, with one sold away, and was never known to claim more children. Further inaccuracies in Gage's 1863 account conflict with her own contemporary report: Gage wrote in 1851 that Akron in general and the press in particular were largely friendly to the woman's rights convention, but in 1863 she wrote that the convention leaders were fearful of the "mobbish" opponents. This is a reprint of Gage's version without the heavy dialect or her interjected comments.
The speech
1851 version by Robinson
Truth delivered the speech on May 29, 1851, at the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. Marius Robinson, who attended the convention and worked with Truth, printed the speech as he transcribed it in the June 21, 1851, issue of the Anti-Slavery Bugle.