In 1828, a former slave named Isabella van Wagenen took her owner to court on the charge that he had illegally sold her five-year-old son out of state. Isabella herself had only been legally free for two years at this point, since New York State was still in the process of phasing out slavery. Those educated by the 1619 project might be shocked to discover that Isabella won her case—one of the first brought by a black woman in the United States—and had her child returned from Alabama on grounds of established habeas corpus rights.
Just about every American has learned about Isabella van Wagenen, albeit by a different name: Sojourner Truth. Truth’s lawsuit is a testament not only to her tenacity, but also to antebellum America’s commitment to justice under the law. However, Isabella has now become a recognized icon of the oppression narrative now used to denigrate American history as too “white,” chauvinistic, and Christian. This is not a casual generalization or exaggeration. Sojourner Truth—particularly her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech—is revered by progressive activists. But as is often the case with historical activism, the account of her famous speech is tarred with falsehoods.
Every American schoolchild for generations has read “Ain’t I a Woman?” The speech is a teacher’s dream: it is short, on-the-nose, and conveniently includes some third-person narration to explain the parts where Truth cows the hostile men in her audience. However, there are two radically different versions of the speech. The most famous one showcases Truth’s unstudied field hand English, evocative of Mark Twain’s Jim with its opening, “Well, chillen, whar dar’s so much racket dar must be som’ting out o’kilter!” This is the universally preferred version, included in countless textbooks, classroom syllabi, and even by the National Park Service, although modern editors tend to strip out most of the dialect, and present a more “cleaned up” version.
The other, all-but-completely unknown version of the speech is from Marius Robinson’s newspaper account from three weeks after Truth’s speech at the Akron Ohio Suffragette convention of 1851. All evidence suggests that this version, which does not even include the line, “Ain’t I a woman?” is the closest account of what Sojourner Truth actually said. Robinson’s version is much more self-deprecating and less rhetorically powerful–much more in keeping with extemporaneous remarks made by someone with very little education. While Sojourner Truth was a truly impressive person, she was not an autodidact rhetorical genius as textbooks convey.