Sojourner Truth Tea Towel

I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? This is what Sojourner Truth asked the audience at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851 during her speech, Aint I a woman?. This impromptu address, where she challenged prevailing notions of racial and gender inferiority and demanded equal human rights for all women and for all blacks, became her best-known speech and was widely disseminated. At a time were advocating for women and African Americans were dangerous and challenging enough, and being one was even harder, her words were a truly radical act. In fact, her whole life was remarkable. Born into slavery and sold at the age of nine, Truth was sold three times and had five children before she escaped with her infant daughter to a nearby abolitionist family in 1826.