The Whole Truth  ## Metadata - Author: [[Sidedoor]] - Full Title: The Whole Truth - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/4ffa9252-82a9-4260-986f-0a593be572eb ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Misattributed Speech** - Sojourner Truth's famous "Ain't I a Woman" speech, delivered in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, is widely misattributed. - The actual speech contained different words and focused on logical arguments for women's rights. Transcript: Speaker 1 Akron, Ohio, 1851. A tall black woman strides into the center of a meeting hall as women gather round. She takes a beat, composes herself, and begins to speak. Well, children, where there's so much racket, there must be something out of the kilt. This is how Sojourner Truth's most famous speech begins. And this is legendary actress Cicely Tyson reenacting it at the U.S. Capitol. Speaker 3 I think between the women of the North and the Negroes of the South all thinking about rights, you white men are going to be in a fix pretty soon. Speaker 1 Sojourner Truth was an abolitionist, women's rights activist, and traveling speaker, one of the most prominent voices for justice and equality of her time. And this speech is one of the most famous women's rights speeches in American history. Speaker 3 Now, if the first woman God ever made was able to take this world and turn it upside down, all these women's hair together ought to be able to get it back and turn it right side up again. Speaker 1 And now they're asking to do it. You men better let them. Truth is known today as a symbol of women's rights and a key figure in American history. Her likeness is found all over the place. She's crisscrossed the globe as a postage stamp, joined your web search as a Google doodle, and even ventured to our neighboring planet as the namesake for the first Mars rover. Good shot of sojourning. And Truth's legacy is inseparably linked with a single phrase from her famous speech. Nobody ever helped me in no carriage. Speaker 3 Over no mud puddles who gives me any best place in Ain't I a Woman. Speaker 2 Ain't I a Woman. You could probably go somewhere or go on Etsy and find a pillow or a sticker with ain't I a woman on it. Ashley ([Time 0:00:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e1f0d45e-de71-4fc1-9668-6b50fc13fbf0)) - **Sojourner Truth's Early Life** - Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree in late 1700s New York, spoke Dutch, not Southern dialect, as commonly portrayed. - Sold multiple times during enslavement, she was forced into marriage and had five children, not thirteen as some accounts claim. Transcript: Speaker 3 In rural New York. If she had an accent, which she probably did, it would have been Dutch-inflected, not Southern. Speaker 1 This is Nell Irvin Painter, author of the book Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol. And she says truth was born into slavery with an entirely different name. Speaker 3 Sometimes you will see her spoken of during the early part of her life as Isabella Bumfrey. Speaker 1 Isabella spent the first part of her life enslaved in upstate New York. At age nine, she was sold with a flock of sheep as a package deal. Speaker 2 I mean, that happened quite often. Speaker 1 The Smithsonian's Ashley Corrin again. She says Isabella was sold again and again, and finally ended up living with the Dumont family. Speaker 2 So she was with Dumonts for about 17 years. So imagine a life of a lot of domestic labor, very long days. I mean, that pretty much was her existence at the time. Speaker 1 When she was 14, the Dumonts forced her to marry an older enslaved man named Thomas. And if you were to believe the Ain't I a Woman speech, they had 13 children together. I have born 13 children, seen most sold off into slavery. Speaker 2 And when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman? Speaker 1 The number of children she actually had was five. One was sold into slavery, and the others forced into a form of indentured servitude. But New York had begun a gradual emancipation law in the early 1800s. In 1827, the year before slavery was to be outlawed for good in New York State, her enslaver promised to free her. When he reneged on that promise, she freed herself. Speaker 2 One day, very, very early in the morning, she decides that she's going to leave. So she walks away with one of her children in her arms and just walks away right at dawn. Speaker 1 She later said, quote, I did not run off, for I thought that wicked. But I walked off, believing that to be all right. ([Time 0:05:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1ac905d1-18f1-4eb5-9b45-7aa9dc8ddf23)) - **The Kingdom** - After escaping slavery, Isabella joined a cult-like group in New York City led by Matthias. - Accused and acquitted of poisoning a member, she left after Matthias's imprisonment for child abuse. Transcript: Speaker 1 Arrived in New York City during a time in America called the Second Great Awakening. Speaker 3 It's a moment of tremendous religious fervor for Americans generally, especially in the Northeast. Isabella had her own religious awakening. Speaker 1 She had no formal education, couldn't read or write, but people read the Bible to her. She learned it so well she could preach it and soon found a religious community that embraced her speaking skills. Although it was a bit of a fringe community. Speaker 2 A group we may refer to in 2024 as a cult. This religious community the kingdom. Speaker 1 The kingdom was led by a man named Robert Matthews. But like many cult leaders, he went by a single name, Matthias. Speaker 2 He thought of himself as a prophet. He thought that women were evil and that eating pork was wrong. Speaker 1 Wait, are those two things on the same plane? Because I feel like, you know. Speaker 2 I never said this man made sense, made any sense. Speaker 1 I won't go into details, but basically every negative thing that comes to mind when you hear cult, you can safely assume was happening here. Financial, relational, the whole kit and caboodle. And Ashley says people are always surprised that Truth, an icon of women's independence, found herself in a cult led by Matthias, the misogynist messiah. Speaker 2 This particular part of her story is so fascinating to me because no one ever talks about it. This particular part is not a part of sort of that mainstream sort of overall story that people are familiar with. Speaker 1 But Ashley says she can empathize with Isabella's situation. Speaker 2 I mean, she's a single woman with kids trying to earn a living in New York City. And so it's not hard to understand how this could have happened, right? She's someone who's looking for community, who needs community. And at this time, there are a number of individuals who are looking for people who are vulnerable to be a part of whatever it is they're trying to do. And this dude had his cult and brought her in. Speaker 1 According to newspapers at the time, Isabella and Matthias were thick as thieves. Speaker 2 The two of them were actually involved in a possible crime involving someone else in the church slash cult. They were both accused of poisoning a member of their community. Speaker 1 They were both acquitted, but other charges against Matthias stuck. He was convicted for beating his own child and sent to jail. Speaker 2 And that's when then Isabella said, you know what, it's time to go. ([Time 0:07:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e33f7e48-9533-44c1-84ec-3e288c85f5c3)) - **Birth of Sojourner Truth** - Isabella became "Sojourner Truth" after a spiritual experience in 1843, believing God gave her the name. - She began preaching, initially about the apocalypse, gaining recognition for her public speaking, particularly its succinctness compared to others like Frederick Douglass. Transcript: Speaker 1 With the kingdom in ruins, Isabella was at a crossroads, unsure where to go and what to do, until God himself weighed in. Speaker 2 One of the things that's really crucial about understanding Sojourner Truth is her spirituality. And religion was incredibly essential to then Isabella. Speaker 1 Isabella said she spoke with God and God spoke to her. Speaker 2 One day in 1843, when she was praying, The name Truth comes to her from the Holy Spirit. Speaker 1 She adopts the name Sojourner, a biblical term to describe a person who's temporarily passing from one place to the next. Speaker 2 As a traveler who wanted to spread the gospel, spread the truth, that name Sojourner Truth sort of became her calling card. Speaker 1 Isabella changed her name and Sojourner Truth was born. And from then on, it was her mission to go about spreading the truth. Speaker 2 Now, what was this truth? That the end of the world was coming, and that there was going to be an apocalypse. Speaker 1 That was the truth? That was the truth. Let's just say the truth evolved. Truth traveled up the Connecticut River Valley preaching and started to gain a reputation as a great speaker. While in Massachusetts, she got involved with prominent women's rights speakers. They quickly recognized her skills. Speaker 3 And so she took her power, her gifts as preacher, into her feminist and anti-slavery activism. Speaker 1 This was the early days of the women's rights movement. The first women's rights convention in the U.S. Had just taken place in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Speaker 3 This is a moment when American women in the North are starting to recognize their power and campaign for women's rights. Truth started traveling around the North and Midwest giving speeches, touring the lecture circuit. Speaker 2 Being a traveling lecturer in the 1850s was like being an influencer in 2024. There were a lot of people making their bread and butter by traveling and speaking. Speaker 1 She met other prominent speakers at the time, people like Frederick Douglass and the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. In 1850, she dictated her memoirs to a friend and published a book, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Which ([Time 0:10:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a1af6f5c-27a4-4890-80fc-330e96132b93)) - **Manipulated Image** - Sojourner Truth's image has often been manipulated to fit others' narratives. - A painting of Truth with Lincoln, for instance, falsely depicts them as close friends, reflecting a desired narrative rather than reality. Transcript: Speaker 1 Sojourner Truth was a person so committed to the truth that she literally changed her name to Truth. But some of the people who carried forward her legacy weren't as committed to the facts as she was. And you can see this in what might be the most famous painting of Sojourner Truth. Speaker 4 She has a white shawl. She's very plainly dressed. And she's holding out her right hand a little bit over this book, which is the Bible. Speaker 1 This is Kim Sayet, host of the Portraits podcast and director of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. She and I are looking at a copy of this painting that's part of the museum's collections. Speaker 4 So Jonah is seated, and she has a kind of a blank look. And it's a little bit unusual for her because she took pride looking directly at the viewer when she sat for her portrait. Speaker 1 The portrait is also unusual because truth isn't alone. Speaker 4 Standing behind her is Abraham Lincoln. He's sort of looming over her a little bit. He is looking down at the book. So they're not really looking at this book together, but he looks like he's turning a page. Speaker 1 The man, the legend, Abraham Lincoln. This was a big deal. Speaker 3 It was a kind of stamp of approval, a kind of proof she was considered important in her time. Speaker 1 Nell Irvin Painter again. She says this painting depicts Truth as an important historical American figure, a Black abolitionist and suffragist invited to the White House during the Civil War. Speaker 3 She is welcomed and not just treated as an equal, but also as someone of greater importance than the president. So he is standing, pointing out something in a book to her, and she is seated. Speaker 1 But this entire scene, like the Ain't I a Woman speech, is invented. So it's a made-up scenario, not painted from life. Truth did visit the White House once. But it was the same way you or I might visit today, as a sort of tourist. She did meet Lincoln there. But according to her companion, who wrote about the meeting, he pretty much brushed her off. But this painting, which was made in 1893, 10 years after Truth died and nearly 30 years after Lincoln's assassination, it creates a very different impression. Speaker 4 So this is very much an apotheosis, as we say, a sort of a deification of both of these remarkable people. Speaker 1 The painting shows what people wanted to believe, that Lincoln had a rosy friendship with Sojourner Truth, that they were buds, that Truth was a frequent visitor to the White House During the Civil War. Speaker 3 That she advised him on how to conduct the war, that they stayed in close touch. I mean, they're practically lovey-dovey. And it worked. Speaker 1 The impression that Truth and Lincoln were friends persisted for much of the 20th century, mainly due to this one painting, a fictionalized version of how someone else would have wanted Truth to appear. Speaker 4 She couldn't read and she couldn't write, and we have no words that weren't mediated through somebody else. So any quote attributed to Sojourner has gone through the filter of a ghostwriter or someone else. ([Time 0:20:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4b7b354f-7313-4dde-9f19-e4a4cebb530b)) - **Gage's Reinterpretation** - Frances Dana Gage's 1863 retelling of Truth's 1851 speech added Southern dialect and emphasized Truth's age, perpetuating stereotypes. - Gage, though an ally, altered the speech to make it seem more authentically "Black" and to resonate with existing tropes. Transcript: Speaker 1 And nowhere is this more evident than in the reinterpretation of Truth's most famous speech. We know Truth gave a rousing speech in 1851 because Marius Robinson recorded it. But where did this ain't-I business come from? Well, Robinson wasn't the only journalist in the audience that day. The president of the convention, Frances Dana Barker Gage. She was a journalist, too. And 12 years after the event, she published her own version of the speech. Speaker 3 Gage is right about the message. Where she's wrong is in the quote. Speaker 1 It's important to understand Gage considered herself Truth's ally. For context, at the time of this convention, some white women didn't even want to include Black women in the movement. They believed there were two distinct groups. Speaker 3 The woman and the black. And so the woman is white and educated and the black is southern male and enslaved. Speaker 1 But Gage did not agree. Speaker 3 Gage was much more attuned to Sojourner Truth's insistence that all women deserved their human rights. Speaker 1 Gage wanted to build up, center Black and working women in the narratives about abolition and women's rights. But even abolitionists had their biases. Speaker 4 White abolitionists still had a sense of their superiority over their African-American friends. They still, I would contend, had a deep-seated belief that it was thanks to their allyship that their African-American colleagues could take a step up. So there is still a sense of infantilizing. There's still very much a sense of, you know, you should be grateful to me. Speaker 1 They could get behind the narrative that Sojourner Truth was an enslaved woman who had escaped evil Southerners, and here she was, this old wise woman with extraordinary perception. Painter says that's why Gage changed the speech from standard English to Southern slave dialect. Speaker 3 True speaking and dialect seems realer, more Negro, more Black, more African American, and therefore more satisfying. Speaker 1 Again, here's the first sentence of the original speech, titled On Women's Rights. May I say a few words? I want to say a few words about this matter. Speaker 2 I am a woman's rights. Speaker 1 And here's the first sentence of Gage's version, which was titled, Aren't I a Woman? Speaker 3 Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter. Speaker 1 Smithsonian's Ashley Corrin says Gage also had truth talking about how old she is in the speech. Strider is not old. She was in her early 50s when she gave that speech. And for all my Gen Xers out there, we see you. That is not old. Speaker 2 So she's not some older African-American lady. But to reimagine her giving the speech as an older African-American lady is playing up on tropes of representations of African femaleness that make them more wise. This older black woman is giving you this wisdom and you should listen. And ([Time 0:23:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2ec66971-173a-4da8-8259-c6e3b9a9d4e5)) - **Truth's Carte de Visites** - Sojourner Truth used carte de visites (photographs) to control her public image, countering misrepresentations. - She sold these photos to support herself, captioning them "I sell the shadow to support the substance." Transcript: Speaker 1 This was not the first time Truth saw her words twisted and changed. She could see the importance of taking control of her own image. Luckily, she had a new tool at her disposal. Speaker 4 The carte de visite really comes to the fore during the Civil War, 1861. And it becomes a craze, like around the world. They literally called it carte-mania. Speaker 1 The carte de visite was a new form of photography that made it affordable for anyone to get their picture taken and make a bunch of copies. Kim says African Americans, as people who were often caricatured and stereotyped by painters and sculptors, especially embraced carte de visites. Prominent speakers like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass basically said, We trust the science behind the photograph. Speaker 4 While, yes, a person has to push a button to take the picture, you basically can't mess with it. Speaker 1 Truth saw the power of the carte de visite. She could control her image without journalists or artists bending the truth. She's her own publicist. That's the way I would put it. She's her own publicist. To craft her image, Truth sat for numerous carte de visites, trying to project an image of the truth she wanted people to see. In my favorite, she holds knitting. Speaker 3 And I think that was her favorite as well, because it appears many, many, many times in many different repositories. Speaker 1 This carte de visite is at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. Speaker 4 She has her hair in a cap, a white cap, and she's looking directly out at the camera. And she's wearing glasses, which is interesting for someone who can't read. There's also a book next to her. Speaker 1 And we don't know what the book is, but it appears she's projecting the image of an educated woman. And at the bottom of the page is a caption. Speaker 3 The caption is not, aren't I a woman? The caption is, I sell the shadow to support the substance. Speaker 1 This phrase, as poetic as it is, is actually a quite literal statement. She's saying that she sells the shadow, which is another word for photograph back then, to support the substance. Herself. Literally. Speaker 3 I am selling this rendition of myself in order to feed myself and clothe myself. Speaker 1 Truth sold these carte de visites and her biography wherever she gave speeches as a way to pay the bills. It was highly practical, but it was also a tool she used to control her image when others had taken liberties with it. ([Time 0:27:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eb9ef528-3901-4f48-b7c4-afb85f1b5d9e)) - **The Spread of Gage's Version** - Gage's version of Truth's speech gained popularity through Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's "History of Woman Suffrage", becoming the accepted narrative. - This version, resurfaced during second-wave feminism, solidified "Ain't I a Woman" as a rallying cry, overshadowing Truth's original words. Transcript: Speaker 1 These carte de visites and her book are how most people would have known Truth during her lifetime. Speaker 3 Gage's version of Truth didn't actually catch on until much later. At the very end of the 19th century, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton put together a collection of documents called the History of Women's Suffrage. Speaker 1 This collection, sat buried in libraries, mostly read by scholars, for decades. Until the 1960s, when second-wave feminism made it more acceptable to teach women's history in high schools and colleges, out came a history of women's suffrage. It got dusted off, cracked open, and used as the basis for many a lesson plan. But inside... Speaker 3 We do not find Robinson. We do not find other Black women, for that matter. We find Sojourner Truth a la Francisina Gage. Speaker 1 This version of Truth became the official version in the story of women's suffrage. The words, aren't I a woman, tweaked into, ain't I a woman, turned into a rallying cry, a slogan for empowerment that turned truth into a powerful feminist symbol. Which is great, but Nell Irvin Painter says if we don't learn anything else about truth beyond this phrase. Speaker 3 You cheat yourself. You cheat American history by only having resort to a slogan that she did not utter. ([Time 0:30:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b76e9e5d-1dfa-431c-9b5a-be8b76c619d8)) - **Appreciate Truth's Complexity** - Nell Irvin Painter suggests focusing on Sojourner Truth's intelligence, self-education, and clear messaging, rather than just the misattributed quote. - Appreciating Truth's full complexity enriches our understanding of her legacy. Transcript: Speaker 1 Painter says it's normal for us to want to lionize our historical figures. In fact, it's usually our greatest historical figures who inspire the tallest tales. But when we make someone larger than life, we miss out on their missteps, their ups and downs, their forays into cults, the complexity of the full person they were. And it's up to us to decide if we want a satisfying story or the truth. It's like Sojourner Truth said, and yes, I double-checked that she actually said this, truth is powerful and it prevails. Speaker 3 I would be so happy if people said, this is what Sojourner Truth means to me. She was a self-educated woman. She was extremely intelligent. She had a message that she delivered clearly and effectively. If people would say that, I would be so grateful. ([Time 0:31:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/aea0e071-5058-4c2d-8148-45499598ea33))