It’s Women History Month! And, Ain’t “I” A Woman…

As a child in elementary school, I chose to research Sojourner Truth for my first Black History book review assignment. Truth, originally named by her parents, Isabella BaumFREE; I just love what the last four letters of her last name spells. My female icon, during a transition of civil rights, spoke with deep dignity and great pride of her “Womanism”, a term coined in 1979 by Alice Walker, the novelist who wrote the book, The Color Purple, starring Whoopie Goldberg. Womanism was identified as a distinctive description not opposing feminism, a term originally attributed to White women’s experience of oppression from patriarchal practices whilst ignoring, eliminating, and dismissing (which are all of the same if you ask me) the Black Female experience of oppression, but recognizing the Black Female experience of oppression. I suppose no one wanted to truly admit the “triple quandary” of the Black Woman experience: Black, Woman, and treated as the lowest class of people. In my own right due to my own experiences, Womanism captures “our” STRENGTH.

“Ain’t I Woman?”

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the Negroes of the South and the women
at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?
That man over there 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 ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have
ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head
me! And ain’t I a woman? 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 all sold off to
slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus
heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it?[member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that
got to do with women’s rights or Negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold
but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me
have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much
rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ
come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a
woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world
upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it
back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it. The
men better let them. Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing
more to say.