I am above eighty years old … I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked.
SOJOURNER TRUTHI am above eighty years old … I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked.
SOJOURNER TRUTHOh no, honey, I can’t read little things like letters. I read big things like men.
SOJOURNER TRUTHThat 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?
SOJOURNER TRUTHWe do as much, we eat as much, we want as much.
SOJOURNER TRUTHI did not run away, I walked away by daylight….
SOJOURNER TRUTHI am a woman’s rights. I have as much as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?
SOJOURNER TRUTHI am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring. Because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.
SOJOURNER TRUTHThe rich rob the poor and the poor rob one another.
SOJOURNER TRUTHI don’t read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations. I can see through a millstone, though I can’t see through a spelling-book. What a narrow idea a reading qualification is for a voter!
SOJOURNER TRUTHI am glad to see that men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and while the water is stirring, I will step into the pool.
SOJOURNER TRUTHWhere there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter.
SOJOURNER TRUTHAnd ar’n’t I a woman?
SOJOURNER TRUTHYou have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.
SOJOURNER TRUTHLife 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 TRUTHThis is beautiful indeed; the colored people have given this to the head of the government, and that government once sanctioned laws that would not permit its people to learn enough to enable them to read this book.
SOJOURNER TRUTHIf women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it?
SOJOURNER TRUTH