'And Ain't I a Woman?'

摘要

A fromer slave named Sojourner Truth electrified a woman's-rights convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, striding to the front of the crowd through a raucous band of clergymen who were determined to disrupt the meeting. More than six feet tall and built like a halfback with huge muscles from working in the fields, Truth ridiculed the argument that women were too delicate to survive outside the protection of the home and should be shielded from public life. "The man over there says 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 puddles, or gives me the best place―and ain't I a woman?" She flexed her arm to show her strength and said, "I could work as much and eat as much as a man-when I could get it ―and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most of'em sold into slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me―and ain't I a woman?" ,