What we know as history is not always historical. Such is the case with the quote in this artwork, “Ain’t I a Woman,” attributed to Sojourner Truth from an extemporaneous speech she gave to a women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio in 1851. Since Sojourner was illiterate, her speech was not written down until it was published a week later in The Anti-Slavery Bugle, with no mention of this line. Twelve years later, in 1863, another version of her speech was published, in the New York Independent, this time giving Sojourner a Southern communication style.

Sojourner Truth was a six-foot tall New Yorker, whose first language was Dutch. She started to learn English at the age of nine. So it’s unlikely she spoke like a Southern slave - highlighting the power of folklore and need to pen history to suit Southern needs.

Sojourner was born Isabelle Baumfree (Belle), a slave, in Ulster County, New York around 1797; the exact year is unknown. By the age of thirteen, she’d been bought and sold three times. Of her five children, four by her husband Thomas (a slave) and one by a slave owner, only her infant Sophia remained with her when she escaped to freedom in 1826.

Once free, Belle asked the Lord to give her a new name symbolic of her new mission - to travel about and proclaim the truth, ergo Sojourner Truth. She spent the rest of her life as an abolitionist and suffrage activist, meeting and speaking with some of the most influential leaders in those movements. She even met with Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant at the White House.

Behind Sojourner, in this artwork, is a quilt inspired by Harriet Powers’ appliqué work, whose “naiveté of expression ... is delicious,” so described a local artist of the time. Born into slavery in Georgia in 1837, Powers’ folk art quilts chronicled local legends, astronomical events, and Bible stories.