There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about colored women, and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I’m 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.
ATTRIBUTION:
Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), African American human rights activist and preacher. As quoted in Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings, part 3, by Miriam Schnier (1972).
Speaking at an 1867 meeting of the American Equal Rights Association held in New York City. Black men would be granted the right to vote by the Fifteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution in 1870; the Nineteenth Amendment, granting the same right to women, would not take effect until fifty years later. Born a slave in Ulster County, New York, and named Isabella Baumfree, Truth had been freed by New York State law in 1827. In 1843, she had a religious vision which led her to change her name and become an itinerant preacher. She also became a prominent and beloved figure in the woman suffrage and anti- slavery movements.
