Nearly 130 years later it became the title of an iconic book authored by recently-deceased revolutionary writer, activist, critic and academic bell hooks (the mystifying lower case being her way of asserting that her books mattered more than she did). And ain’t I a woman?” That jeering four-word query, repeated several times over, emphasized the inequities faced by black women as well as her right to be treated on par with all men. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place. “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages,” she said, “and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. The year was 1851, 10 years before the start of the American Civil War, and the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, had an explosive surprise in store when Sojourner Truth, a spirited woman of colour, who had experienced and confronted the excesses of American slavery, took the stage to draw on her experiences and highlight the differing realities of women’s lives.
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