Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth: American abolitionist leaders

Frederick Douglass & Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass

Sojourner Truth is best known perhaps as one of the key organizers of the Underground Railroad, part of the Abolitionist movement, but she also was an important part of the Union Army's food preparation for soldier units in the Civil War, and she holds a prominent place in the history of the women's rights movement,. On the day in which she made her speech, at a Women's Rights Convention in Ohio in 1851, about ten years before the Civil War, there were those in the audience who would rather she not speak, because she was so strongly identified with the movement to free the slaves and the fear was she would water down the theme of the conference, which was women's rights, women's suffrage, and other issues dealing with a woman's place in America in the 19th Century.

Sojourner Truth was tall, had a deep voice, and was a character. She never for a moment doubted herself, her mission, or her ability to move others in the direction she wished to have them go. In her speech, which she probably had given more than once or twice in her career, she made a few wise cracks at the expense of a previous speaker.

He was saying that women are the weaker gender, that they need help negotiating mud puddles and getting into carriages, setting her up perfectly for her semantics. Using the power of redundancy and the charm of colloquial language, she mesmerized the audience. "Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me!" she argued.

She went on to cleverly play dumb, and at the same time enlist the audience. "What's this they call it?" she asked rhetorically, pointing to her head. Someone in the audience whispered "intellect," and then she had their attention 100%. She marched on to her own drummer when she pointed out that okay, Jesus Christ was a man, not a woman, but "where did your Christ come from?" she wondered. "From God and a woman." She rested her case. It was classic and classy. And while nobody knows how many runaway slaves were guided to safety by Sojourner Truth, no doubt is was in the hundreds, if not thousands. She will forever stand as a strong advocate for freedom, fairness, justice, and the fact that she happened to be a woman won't be forgotten either.

As for Frederick Douglass, he was nothing short of brilliant. His speeches were powerful and his writing was extraordinarily skillful, especially given the fact that he was born a slave and taught himself much of what he knew. His narrative is polished and at times understated, which actually adds power to what he says. Because when a reader goes through the Narrative from the Life of Frederick Douglass that reader knows ahead of time he or she is reading something written by a famous African-American who was a slave. The power in the narrative is established in terms of culture and history. But add to that the power of the writing, and Frederick's work takes on an even more dramatic tone.

He explains in relatively calm narrative that he has seen an overseer named "Mr. Plummer...cut and slash the women's heads..." And how he knew that his master Anthony to "take great pleasure in whipping a slave." But then he goes on, now that he has the reader's attention: "I have often been awakened at the dawn of the day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, who he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood." And moreover, Frederick's way of showing the strength of the slave culture he emerged from, he added, "No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose" since the "louder she screamed, the harder he whipped..."