While
reading Truth’s speech, I kept wondering if “Sojourner” was her actual name or
if it had been changed. I then thought back to our first day of class when we
told each other our names and explained their origin and meaning. While
researching Truth’s name, I discovered that she had been born into slavery and
that her name had been “Isabella Baumfree”. In 1843, after Truth converted to
Christianity, she changed her name to “Sojourner Truth” and said “Sojourner
because I was to travel up and down the land showing people their sins and
being a sign to them, and Truth because I was to declare the truth unto the
people."[1] I think
Truth’s name change was the beginning step towards her forming her identity as
an individual. Truth’s name was an important part of who she was and acted as a
device of inspiration that led her to dedicate her life to the abolitionist
movement. In a time of turmoil, Truth was one of the only African American women to publicly speak during this time. In
doing so, Truth paved the way for future African American activists. In her speech, Truth speculates that while “Woman at the
North” are “helped into carriages and lifted over ditches”, she “ploughed and
planted” and saw most of her thirteen children “sold off to slavery”. This juxtaposition
highlights the inequality between how men treat white women and how they treat
black women. Although I cannot relate to the hardship Truth experienced
during her lifetime, I can relate to her passion for equal rights for all genders and races.
Evette Dionne’s article, “Women’s Suffrage
Leaders Left Out Black Women”, was eye opening and informative. I am
embarrassed to admit that before reading Dionne’s article, I had never heard of
Shirley Chisholm or Fannie Lou Hammer. This deficit of knowledge shows how the
educational systems in our society have failed at being as inclusive as they
are deemed to be. This article made me realize my lack of knowledge of women’s
suffrage as a whole and that similarly to the women who “wore all-white
outfits”, I had been looking through a lens that excluded black women
suffragists such as, Shirley Chisholm and Fannie Lou Hammer. This exclusion is
also mentioned in Lorde’s article as Rich’s quote, “white feminists that
educated themselves about such an enormous amount over the past ten years, how
come you haven’t also educated yourselves about Black women and the differences
between us”. These differences are also stated in Angela Davis’s article, “Working
Women, Black Women, and the History of the Suffrage Movement”. The inability of
the white women’s suffragist movements to recognize black women are also what
led to the disunity of women’s suffragist movements. Davis accounts that “Women
were welcomed at the 1869 founding convention of the National Colored Labor Union.
As the black workers explained they did not want to commit ‘the mistakes
heretofore made by our white fellow citizens in omitting women”. This quote
only reinstates Dionne’s claims that the “1884 Seneca Falls Convention…failed
to address the racism and oppression faced by black women”. Audre Lorde would
agree that these different movements and unions should focus on their
differences as strengths instead of something that separates them from each
other. Stanton and Anthony were unable to see the suffragist movement as a way
to unite both white and black women and in their urgency to secure votes for
white women made a “platform for white supremacy”.
Before reading these articles, I was
unaware of the dark, oppressive, and racist attitudes of Elizabeth Stanton and
Susan towards black women. It was refreshingly humbling to read these articles
because they displayed my lack of knowledge on women’s suffrage and equality—which
I had not been aware of until now.
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