Who Was...

 Sojourner Truth?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sojourner_truth_c1870.jpg

“That man. . . 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 aren’t I a woman?” From speech at Women’s Rights Convention, Akron, OH. [1851]

Ms. Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in New York in the late 18^th century. Her first owners spoke Dutch, and that was the language Ms. Truth and her family spoke as well. Before she gained her freedom from slavery (slavery was abolished in New York state on July 4, 1827), Ms. Truth was sold numerous times. Her last master broke his promise of freedom, so Ms. Truth took her infant child and ran away leaving behind her husband and two other children. Ms. Truth learned that one of her children was illegally sold into slavery in Alabama. She fought for her son’s freedom and won. Ms. Truth continued to fight against slavery, prison reform, and for equal suffrage for men and women.  Ms. Truth spoke with President Lincoln and the Michigan state legislature about these causes before she passed away in 1883.The quote above is from a speech she gave at a Women’s Rights Convention in Ohio in 1851. 

______________________

Sources:

Biography.com. (2018, February 27). Sojourner Truth Biography. Retrieved from: https://www.biography.com/people/sojourner-truth-9511284


O’Brien, G., (Ed.). (2012). Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 18^th ed. New York: Little, Brown and Company. pp. 416.