Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier.
I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me. – Sojourner Truth
Attn: Florida’s School Children.
“Ain’t I a Woman?” was spoken extemporaneously at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, in May 29, 1851 by Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), born into slavery in New York.
She came forward to the platform and addressed the President with great simplicity: “May I say a few words?” Receiving an affirmative answer, she proceeded:
I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman’s rights. [sic] I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman have a pint, and a man a quart – why can’t she have her little pint full?
You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, – for we can’t take more than our pint’ll hold. The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don’t know what to do. Why children, if you have woman’s rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won’t be so much trouble.
I can’t read, but I can hear. I have heard the Bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept and Lazarus came forth.
And how came Jesus into the world?
Through God who created him and the woman who bore him.
Man, where was your part?
But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.
It is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the effect Ms. Truth’s speech produced upon the audience.
God-smacked comes to mind.
You can well imagine.
After all, it was 123 more years before women’s civil rights included their own individual checking accounts.
Even the non-slave white women.
Just one example why history lessons can be so dangerous in the wrong hands.
Imagine the outrage.
“I am not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star.”