Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth: Voices for Freedom

Introduction

Sojourner Truth is perhaps best known as one of the key figures of the Underground Railroad and the Abolitionist movement, but she was also an important participant in the Union Army's food preparation for soldier units during the Civil War, and she holds a prominent place in the history of the women's rights movement. On the day she delivered her famous 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 had not spoken. Because she was so strongly identified with the movement to free the enslaved, some feared she would dilute the conference's central themes: women's rights, women's suffrage, and other issues relating to a woman's place in nineteenth-century America.

Sojourner Truth and the Women's Rights Convention

Sojourner Truth was tall, had a deep voice, and was a commanding presence. She never for a moment doubted herself, her mission, or her ability to move others in the direction she wished them to go. In her speech — one she had likely delivered more than once or twice during her career — she made several pointed remarks at the expense of a previous speaker who had argued that women are the weaker sex, that they need help negotiating mud puddles and getting into carriages. That argument set her up perfectly for what followed.

Truth's Rhetorical Strategies

Using the power of repetition and the charm of colloquial language, Truth mesmerized her audience. "Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me!" she declared. She then cleverly played to the crowd, feigning uncertainty while drawing listeners in. "What's this they call it?" she asked rhetorically, pointing to her head. Someone in the audience whispered "intellect," and at that moment she had their full attention. She pressed on to note that while Jesus Christ was indeed a man, "where did your Christ come from?" — "From God and a woman." It was a classic and persuasive conclusion to her argument.

While no precise record exists of how many freedom-seekers were guided to safety by Sojourner Truth, the number was doubtless in the hundreds, if not thousands. She stands forever as a powerful advocate for freedom and fairness, and the fact that she was a woman — fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously — will not be forgotten.

Frederick Douglass: Slave, Writer, and Orator

Frederick Douglass was nothing short of brilliant. His speeches were powerful, and his writing was extraordinarily skillful — especially given that he was born into slavery and taught himself much of what he knew. His narrative prose is polished and, at times, deliberately understated, which only adds force to what he describes. Because readers approach the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass already knowing they are reading the work of a celebrated African American who was once enslaved, the power of the text operates on both cultural and historical levels. Add to that the quality of the writing itself, and Douglass's work takes on an even more dramatic resonance.

Works Cited

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. University of Virginia Library, Electronic Text Center. Retrieved 11 March 2007, from

Truth, Sojourner. Ain't I a Woman? Retrieved 11 March 2007, from Women Writers, http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/truth.htm.