Aren’t I a Woman?
Aren’t I a Woman is a speech by Isabelle Baunfree aka Sojourner Truth. The speech was delivered at a women’s rights convention. Sojourner Truth never actually wrote down the speech nevertheless, it was a speech forever remembered throughout history. It describes how a black woman wasn’t treated the same way like a white woman.
“I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me-and aren’t I a woman?”
She also pointed out that a woman whether the race wasn’t given the same rights as a white man.
“Then the little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much right as man, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman.”

She gives out several examples to support both claims of unfairness. She also goes into length about the suffering of a black woman.
“I have borne thirteen children and seen them almost all sold off slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, one but Jesus heard-and aren’t I a woman?”

A copy of the speech was later published. In 1881 Frances Gage printed out a copy of them speech too. The speech by Frances Gage and Sojourner were similar in all accounts except one. First of all Sojourner Truth was a freed slave. That means that in her childhood and maybe throughout her early adulthood Sojourner Truth was a slave and was treated as a slave and was handed work as a slave. Frances Gage on the other hand was a white woman. There is a debate whether Frances Gage did this to poke fun at Sojourner Truth. In my opinion I believed that the speech written by Frances Gage was the more accurate. Well for one thing it can be assume that Sojourner Truth never got an education. This can be proven by this statement.
Then they talk about this thing in the head-what’s this they call it? (“Intellect”, whispered someone near.) That’s it honey.
“Den dey talk ‘bout dis ting in de head; what dis dey call it?” (“Intellect,” whispered someone near.) “Dat’s it, honey.
In both examples Sojourner Truth makes the same statement, but the way she said was different. Why can it be assumed that Sojourner Truth never got an education was because she asked a question about something very obvious and the way she stated in both statements. She said “Then they talk about this thing in the head…” The way she stated it makes the reader wonder whether she actual got some form of education.
When a person is a slave their work comes before anything else. They will have to work from when the sun rises to when the sun sets or even later than that. In history there are very few accounts where a slave actually got an education, even less of those of women. Then there also a different example where a slave talks in the same way that Sojourner Truth is portrayed. One example is Huckleberry Finn. In Huckleberry Finn, Jim, the slave, has a very similar dialect to that of the Sojourner Truth portrayed in Frances Gage’s account of the speech. I believed that the fact that Sojourner Truth didn’t had any education support Frances Gage’s paper.