Our blog tracks Jose Arguelles' Dreamspell Calendar. "As chaos and confusion rise, galactic consciousness based on the Law of Time serves as planetary medicine, lifting us into the awareness that we exist within a higher, more expanded realm of existence than the world of third-dimensional form and appearance. Daily practice will elevate consciousness and increase experiences of synchronicity." (Arguelles)
Thyrsa Anne Frazier Svager (June 16, 1930 – July 23, 1999) was an American academic who was one of the first African-American women to gain a PhD in mathematics. Born in Ohio, she graduated from high school at the age of 16, going to Antioch College in Ohio and then doing her postgraduate degrees at Ohio State University. Frazier Svager was the head of the Department of Mathematics at Central State University (CSU) in Ohio for decades, ending her academic career as provost and dean for academic affairs. She and her husband, physics professor Aleksandar Svager, invested one of their salaries during their careers to build a legacy for scholarships. After her death, the Thyrsa Frazier Svager Fund was established to provide scholarships for African-American women majoring in mathematics.
Early life and education
Frazier Svager was born Thyrsa Anne Frazier on June 16, 1930 in Wilberforce, Ohio. Her mother, Elizabeth Anne Frazier, taught speech at Central State University (CSU), a historically black university in Wilberforce, Ohio. Her father, G. Thurston Frazier, headed the Logistics Department at the Wright–Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. He was a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, holding the position of Polemarch in the province. Frazier Svager had four sisters, Margaret Jane, Janie, Gail, and Connie, and a brother, Lafayette (Sonny).
Frazier Svager graduated from Wilberforce University Preparatory Academy in Ohio at the age of 16 in 1947, as class valedictorian. She attended Antioch College, a private liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, majoring in mathematics, with a minor in chemistry, and placed in the 99th percentile in the Princeton Senior Student Examination. Frazier Svager was one of only four black students at Antioch: one of the others was Coretta Scott King, with whom she was friends.
She earned a bachelor of arts degree from Antioch in 1951, going on to gain a master's (1952) and PhD from Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus in 1965, where Paul Reichelderfer was her doctoral adviser. Her dissertation was titled On the product of absolutely continuous transformations of measure spaces.
Career
Frazier Svager worked for a year at Wright–Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, before teaching at Texas Southern University in Houston. In 1954, she joined the faculty of CSU in Wilberforce.
In 1967, Frazier Svager was appointed chairman of the department of mathematics. She was awarded tenure in 1970. She spent a summer in DC in 1966 as a systems analyst at NASA, as visiting faculty at MIT in 1969, and in 1985, she undertook postdoctoral study at OSU during the summer. She was provost and vice president for academic affairs when she retired in 1993. In March 1995, she returned for a short time to CSU as Interim President.
Frazier Svager was active on the issue of scholarships, serving as the president of the local chapter of MOLES, a national association that provided scholarships for college students. She was also a member of Beta Kappa Chi, the National Association of Mathematicians, and the Mathematical Association of America, and was involved with Jack and Jill of America. Frazier Svager participated in the meeting that founded the National Association of Mathematics in 1969.
She wrote two books, CSU's Modern Elementary Algebra Workbook (1969), and Essential Mathematics for College Freshmen (1976).
Personal life
While on the CSU faculty, Frazier met Aleksandar Svager, a Holocaust survivor from Yugoslavia and physics professor at CSU. They married in June 1968 at her parents' home.
Thyrsa Frazier Svager died on July 23, 1999.
Philanthropy
Both university professors with a strong commitment to furthering education opportunities, the Svagers lived on one income, investing the other to build a scholarship fund. After her death, her husband established the Thyrsa Frazier Svager Fund at the Dayton Foundation, for African-American women who major in mathematics at one of six universities, with a legacy contribution planned. As of February 2017, 33 women had received support from the Fund. An annual contribution is also being made to the American Physical Society's Minority Scholarship.
Honors
Frazier Svager was honored with an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by CSU on her retirement, and she was inducted into the Hall of Fame in Greene County, Ohio.*
Susie King Taylor (August 6, 1848 – October 6, 1912) was the first Black Army nurse. She tended to an all Black army troop named the 1st South Carolina Volunteers (Union), later re-designated the 33rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment, where her husband served, for four years during the Civil War. Despite her service, like many African-American nurses, she was never paid for her work. As the author of Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers, she was the only African-American woman to publish a memoir of her wartime experiences. She was also the first African American to teach openly in a school for former slaves in Georgia. At this school in Savannah, Georgia, she taught children during the day and adults at night. She is in the 2018 class of inductees of the Georgia Women of Achievement.
Biography
Susie King Taylor was born a slave at a plantation in Liberty County, Georgia, on August 6, 1848, as Susan Ann Baker. When she was about seven years old, her owner allowed her to go to Savannah to live with her grandmother, Dolly. Taylor's admiration for women may have stemmed from her close relationship with Dolly. Despite Georgia's harsh laws against the formal education of African Americans, Dolly, with whom Taylor lived for much of her childhood, supported Taylor's education by sending her to an illegal school run by a free African-American woman, Mrs. Woodhouse. After learning all she could from Mrs. Woodhouse, Taylor continued her education under the tutelage of various "teachers", both white and black, including playmates, and the son of her grandmother's landlord. From them she gained the rudiments of literacy, then extended her education with the help of two white youths, both of whom knowingly violated law and custom. Her education ended when she was forced to return to her mother on the Isle of Wight after Dolly was arrested at a suburban church meeting for singing freedom hymns. Taylor had to move back with her mother in Fort Pulaski but the Union took the fort not long afterward. Taylor fled with her uncle and his family to St. Catherine's Island, where they received Union protection and a transfer to St. Simon's Island. Taylor impressed the commanding officers with her ability to read and write and was offered a position running a school for children and adults on the island.
In April 1862, Susie Baker and many other African Americans fled to St. Simon's Island, occupied at the time by Union forces. Within days her educational advantages came to the attention of army officers, who offered to obtain books for her if she would organize a school. She thereby became the first black teacher for freed African-American students to work in a freely operating freed men's school in Georgia. She taught 40 children in day school and "a number of adults who came to me nights, all of them so eager to learn to read, to read above anything else." She taught there until October 1862, when the island was evacuated.
While at the school on St. Simon's Island, Baker married Edward King, a black non-commissioned officer in the First South Carolina Volunteers of African Descent (later re-flagged as 33rd United States Colored Troops February 8, 1864, which was disbanded at Fort Wagner in 1866). For three years she moved with her husband's and brothers' regiment, serving as nurse and laundress, and teaching many of the black soldiers to read and write during their off-duty hours. In 1866 she and Edward returned to Savannah, where she established a school for the freed children. Edward King died in September 1866, a few months before the birth of their first child. There are few details about his death but scholars have noted that he died in a work-related accident at the pier unloading ships. Also around this time Taylor was forced to close her school when a free school opened nearby. In 1867 she returned to her native Liberty County to establish another school. In 1868 she again relocated to Savannah, where she continued teaching freedmen for another year and supported herself through small tuition charges, never receiving aid from the northern freed men's aid organizations. Historians say she,Taylor enrolled as a laundress at a camp named "Camp Saxton," The first suits the people wore were red coats and pants.
In the 1870's King traveled to Boston as a domestic servant of a wealthy white family. While there she met Russell L. Taylor, also a native of Georgia. She returned home to Liberty County to marry Taylor on April 20, 1879. She remained in Boston for the rest of her life, returning to the South only occasionally. Taylor still kept in contact with her fellow veterans' group, the Grand Army of the Republic. After a trip to Louisiana in the 1890's to care for a dying son, she wrote her Reminiscences, which were privately published in 1902. She died 10 years later. She is buried next to her second husband at Mount Hope Cemetery in Roslindale, Massachusetts.*
Alice Jackson Stuart was the first female African American to apply for graduate school studies at the University of Virginia. She was denied admission on the basis of "good and sufficient reasons," and later went on to earn her Master of Arts at Columbia University in 1937.
Biography
Alice Jackson Stuart was born June 2, 1913 in Richmond, Virginia to Dr. James Jackson and Clara Kersey. She was the oldest of three surviving children. Stuart was born to college educated parents who could afford to send her to college. As a result, Stuart attended Virginia Union University where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English. During her undergraduate years, Stuart was a member of Virginia State College's Delta Sigma Theta chapter. In August 1935, Stuart became the first African American woman to apply to the University of Virginia for graduate studies. She was denied based upon the Jim Crow educational policies that existed during the time. The school board refused to explain the "good and sufficient reasons" for which she was denied entry. She later went on to attend Columbia University with the grant money she received from the Dovell Act. Stuart graduated in 1937 from Columbia University with a Master of Arts in English. In an interview with her only son, Julian Towns Houston, Julian described his mother as "in some ways a larger than life figure… devoted to education, loved teaching, loved her students." After graduating from Columbia University, Stuart went on to work at Bethune-Cookman College, Howard University, as well as many high schools. She was awarded a fellowship by the Ford Foundation which allowed her to travel around the country. Stuart died age 88 on June 13, 2001, a week after her grandson graduated from Harvard University.
Influences
After Stuart's application had been rejected by the University of Virginia, it became a controversial public issue. It caught the attention of some African American and student organizations in Virginia. The case even brought significant changes to the educational policies towards African American students in the State of Virginia at that time.
After being "rejected respectfully" by the University of Virginia on her application for studying a Master of Arts in French, Stuart tried to seek advice and assistance from the NAACP. It is an organization which aims "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination." The NAACP "had threatened court action in an effort to compel the University of Virginia to admit a Negro graduate student".
The NSL wrote a highly publicized letter to the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia and President John Newcomb condemning their action. The students protested the Board's action "because it implies the desirability of continuing educational inequality". In order to address the case, the NSL scheduled an open forum for students to discuss this controversial issue. This act put pressure to the University of Virginia because the President received half a dozen of similar letters from other NSL university branches.
Despite the fact that racial segregation was still a common phenomenon in the United States in 1930's, the rejection of Stuart's application to the University of Virginia was controversial enough to push forward some changes in the State of Virginia. The State started to provide African American citizens with access to separate-but-equal higher education facilities. In 1935 December, the Virginia State Board of Education announced the setting up of a graduate department for African Americans at Virginia State University in Petersburg. It was the first graduate school for African Americans in Virginia. A resolution adopted by the State Board at its meeting read, "…it is recognized that such opportunities should be provided for the Negros."
Another change came in February 1936 in the Virginia General Assembly. It passed House Bill 470, the Dovell Act, which promised to pay qualified black applicants the additional amount of tuition and travel expenses required to attend school outside the state offering a similar course of study. The bill provided for the education of hundreds of African American students over the next 20–30 years. Because of the Act, Gregory Swanson finally broke the color barrier in 1950 and became the first African American student at the University of Virginia Law School.
Legacy
Several months after Alice Jackson got rejected from UVA, the Virginia State Board of Education created a graduate school for African Americans at Virginia State University in Petersburg in 1935. The following year, the Virginia General Assembly passed the Dovell Act (House Bill 470). This paid qualified black applicants' tuition and travel expenses to attend schools outside the state. In the 1980's, University of Virginia and African American students at the school honored her. Shortly after her death in 2001, the Virginia Senate approved Joint Resolution No. 40 to honor Jackson.
Though Jackson's actions were important in the long process of desegregation at UVA, the first African American student was not accepted at the graduate level until Gregory Swanson in 1950. Afterward, African American students were slowly accepted at the graduate and undergraduate level.
In 2012 Jackson was posthumously honored as one of the Library of Virginia's "Virginia Women in History" for her life's work.*
Bianca Lynne Spriggs is a Black American poet and multidisciplinary artist born in Milwaukee, WI in 1981. She currently resides in Athens, OH where she is an Assistant Professor of English at Ohio University. An Affrilachian Poet, she is the author of Kaffir Lily (Wind Publications, 2010), How Swallowtails Become Dragons (Accents Publishing, 2011), The Galaxy is a Dance Floor (Argos Books, 2016), and Call Her By Her Name (Northwestern University Press, 2016). She is the editor of The Swallowtale Project: Creative Writing for Incarcerated Women (2012), and co-editor of the anthologies, Circe's Lament: An Anthology of Wild Women (Accent's Publishing, 2015), Undead: A Poetry Anthology of Ghouls, Ghosts, and More (Apex Publications, 2017), and Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets(University of Kentucky Press, 2018).
Spriggs's work is considered primarily speculative in nature drawing upon mythology, folklore, surrealism, and science fiction for inspiration. She often focuses on the connections between art and community and the identity of Black women in the American South. From 2006 to 2012, she was the creator and artistic director of the annual Wild Women of Poetry Slam at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. In 2013, her poem "The ________ of the Universe: A Love Story" was tattooed onto 248 residents of Lexington as part of the Lexington Tattoo Project. Also in 2013, at Transylvania University's Morlan Gallery, she collaborated with videographer Angel Clark to curate the multimedia exhibit "The Thirteen," which memorialized 13 black women who were lynched or killed in Kentucky. She was featured on the track "Hypnopomp (Epilogue)" in CunninLynguists' 2011 album Oneirology.
Her passion for poetry sprouted from the visual arts, once she found solace in writing poems and stories. Her writing evolved into a career once she applied to be a writer for the Kentucky Foundation for Women and decided to pursue this practice as a full-time job. Her inspiration comes from her love for storytelling: "Sometimes writing is telling my own story through (other people), and sometimes, it’s telling their stories through my own."
Education
Spriggs graduated from Transylvania University in 2003 with a degree in history and a minor in studio art. She received her M.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2005 and in 2017, she received her PhD in English at the University of Kentucky.
Awards
Spriggs is a 2013 recipient of an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a recipient of five Artist Enrichment Grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, including an Arts Meets Activism grant. She was also named one of the Top 30 Black Performance Poets in the U.S. by TheRoot.com. She was the recipient of the 2016 Sallie Bingham Award for feminist expression in the arts. She was also a Cave Canem Fellow in 2006, 2007, and 2010.*
Christine Shoecraft Smith (1866–1954) was an African-American community worker began her career as the assistant principal of the Alabama State Normal and Industrial School. She married an AME minister, who would become a bishop in the church and assisted him as the manager of the press organ of the Sunday School Union. She worked in many clubs and served as the 13th president of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs.
Early life
Christine Shoecraft was born on July 1, 1866 in Indianapolis, Indiana to Mary B. and A. R. Shoecraft. When she was two years old, Shoecraft's mother died and she was raised by her father and grandmother. At age eight, the family moved to Muncie. Though she worked at washing, ironing and in domestic labor during her schooling, she graduated from high school when she was seventeen. With her savings from working, she was able to buy her graduation dress.
Career
Shoecraft was immediately offered a position as assistant principal of the State Normal and Industrial School in Normal, Alabama, serving in that capacity until December, 1887. The following year, in December, 1888, she married Rev. Charles Spencer Smith. Rev. Smith was the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME)'s Sunday School Union. It was the largest press owned by African-Americans in the United States. Smith went to work at the press and served as a book-keeper, cashier, and clerk before becoming the assistant manager of the Union, the first woman to hold the post. Her work was not interrupted by the birth of their son, Charles Spencer Smith, Jr. and she founded the Women's Club of Nashville in 1896, aligning it with the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC). By 1899, Smith was involved with the NACWC and had been elected as its recording secretary. She continued to serve as the assistant manager of the press through 1900, when Rev. Smith became a bishop of the AME Church. His work required him to travel widely, and Smith established a home in Detroit, Michigan.
Smith was elected president of the Michigan State Association of Colored Women and was an executive member of the Detroit branch of the Urban League. In addition, she served on the executive of the Lucy Thurman YWCA branch and was the residential and maintenance secretary of the Detroit YWCA for six years. In 1916, Smith organized the Young People's Department of the AME Church's Women’s Parent Mite Missionary Society. In 1923, the year that her husband died, she was elected the first vice president of the Mite Society and in 1931 began serving as president of the organization. In that capacity, she traveled to Kingston, Jamaica several times, to make presentations and assist them in their missionary work. The Mite Society was an organization of women who both did social work in their community and raised funds to pay the salaries of those working as missionaries work abroad and build new churches. She served on the executive of numerous clubs and organizations, such as the United Council of Church Women, the Race Relations Commission of the Federal Council of Churches, the Women’s Missionary Society. She was a delegate to all of the biennial meetings of the NACWC and in 1946, was elected its president. As president, she traveled widely throughout the United States and made a to Mexico near the end of her term. For several years she had contributed articles to National Notes the newsletter of the NACWC, until it was suspended in 1935. Smith revived the publication in 1947 and became its editor-in-chief. Her term ended in 1948 and that same year, she was appointed to the board of the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment.
Death and legacy
Smith died in 1954. Her papers created during her years of service to the NACWC are housed in a microfilm collection compiled by the Women’s Studies Department from the University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York.*
Sojourner Truth, born Isabella (Belle) Baumfree; c. 1797 – November 26, 1883) was an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, in 1828 she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man.
She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God had called her to leave the city and go into the countryside "testifying the hope that was in her". Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title "Ain't I a Woman?," a variation of the original speech re-written by someone else using a stereotypical Southern dialect; whereas Sojourner Truth was from New York and grew up speaking Dutch as her first language. During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for former slaves.
In 2014, Truth was included in Smithsonian magazine's list of the "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time".
Early years
Truth was one of the ten or twelve children born to James and Elizabeth Baumfree (or Bomefree). Colonel Hardenbergh bought James and Elizabeth Baumfree from slave traders and kept their family at his estate in a big hilly area called by the Dutch name Swartekill (just north of present-day Rifton), in the town of Esopus, New York, 95 miles (153 km) north of New York City. Charles Hardenbergh inherited his father's estate and continued to enslave people as a part of that estate's property.
When Charles Hardenbergh died in 1806, nine-year-old Truth (known as Belle), was sold at an auction with a flock of sheep for $100 to John Neely, near Kingston, New York. Until that time, Truth spoke only Dutch. She later described Neely as cruel and harsh, relating how he beat her daily and once even with a bundle of rods. Neely sold her in 1808, for $105, to Martinus Schryver of Port Ewen, a tavern keeper, who owned her for eighteen months. Schryver sold her in 1810 to John Dumont of West Park, New York. Although this fourth owner was kindly disposed toward her, considerable tension existed between Truth and Dumont's second wife, Elizabeth Waring Dumont, who harassed her and made her life more difficult. (John Dumont's first wife, Sarah "Sally" Waring Dumont (Elizabeth's sister), died around 1805, five years before he bought Truth.)
Around 1815, Truth met and fell in love with a slave named Robert from a neighboring farm. Robert's owner (Charles Catton, Jr., a landscape painter) forbade their relationship; he did not want the people he enslaved to have children with people he was not enslaving, because he would not own the children. One day Robert snuck over to see Truth. When Catton and his son found him, they savagely beat Robert until Dumont finally intervened, and Truth never saw Robert again. He died some years later, perhaps as a result of the injuries, and the experience haunted Truth throughout her life. Truth eventually married an older slave named Thomas. She bore five children: James, her firstborn, who died in childhood, Diana (1815), fathered by either Robert or John Dumont, and Peter (1821), Elizabeth (1825), and Sophia (ca. 1826), all born after she and Thomas united.
The state of New York began, in 1799, to legislate the abolition of slavery, although the process of emancipating those people enslaved in New York was not complete until July 4, 1827. Dumont had promised to grant Truth her freedom a year before the state emancipation, "if she would do well and be faithful." However, he changed his mind, claiming a hand injury had made her less productive. She was infuriated but continued working, spinning 100 pounds of wool, to satisfy her sense of obligation to him.
Late in 1826, Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter, Sophia. She had to leave her other children behind because they were not legally freed in the emancipation order until they had served as bound servants into their twenties. She later said "I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right."
She found her way to the home of Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen in New Paltz, who took her and her baby in. Isaac offered to buy her services for the remainder of the year (until the state's emancipation took effect), which Dumont accepted for $20. She lived there until the New York State Emancipation Act was approved a year later.
Truth learned that her son Peter, then five years old, had been sold illegally by Dumont to an owner in Alabama. With the help of the Van Wagenens, she took the issue to court and in 1828, after months of legal proceedings, she got back her son, who had been abused by those who were enslaving him. Truth became one of the first black women to go to court against a white man and win the case.
Truth had a life-changing religious experience during her stay with the Van Wagenens, and became a devout Christian. In 1829 she moved with her son Peter to New York City, where she worked as a housekeeper for Elijah Pierson, a Christian Evangelist. While in New York, she befriended Mary Simpson, a grocer on John Street who claimed she had once been enslaved by George Washington. They shared an interest in charity for the poor and became intimate friends. In 1832, she met Robert Matthews, also known as Prophet Matthias, and went to work for him as a housekeeper at the Matthias Kingdom communal colony. Elijah Pierson died, and Robert Matthews and Truth were accused of stealing from and poisoning him. Both were acquitted of the murder, though Matthews was convicted of lesser crimes, served time, and moved west.
In 1839, Truth's son Peter took a job on a whaling ship called the Zone of Nantucket. From 1840 to 1841, she received three letters from him, though in his third letter he told her he had sent five. Peter said he also never received any of her letters. When the ship returned to port in 1842, Peter was not on board and Truth never heard from him again.
The Result of Freedom
1843 was a turning point for Truth. She became a Methodist, and on June 1, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth. She told friends: "The Spirit calls me, and I must go" and left to make her way traveling and preaching about the abolition of slavery. At that time, Truth began attending Millerite Adventist camp meetings. However, that did not last since Jesus failed to appear in 1843 and then again in 1844. Like many others disappointed, Truth distanced herself from her Millerite friends for a while.
In 1844, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Northampton, Massachusetts. Founded by abolitionists, the organization supported women's rights and religious tolerance as well as pacifism. There were, in its four-and-a-half year history, a total of 240 members, though no more than 120 at any one time. They lived on 470 acres (1.9 km2), raising livestock, running a sawmill, a gristmill, and a silk factory. While there, Truth met William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Ruggles. In 1846, the group disbanded, unable to support itself. In 1845, she joined the household of George Benson, the brother-in-law of William Lloyd Garrison. In 1849, she visited John Dumont before he moved west.
Truth started dictating her memoirs to her friend Olive Gilbert, and in 1850 William Lloyd Garrison privately published her book, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. That same year, she purchased a home in what would become the village of Florence in Northampton for $300, and spoke at the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1854, with proceeds from sales of the Narrative and cartes-de-visite entitled "I sell the shadow to support the substance," she paid off the mortgage held by her friend from the Community, Samuel L. Hill.
"Ain't I a Woman?"
Main article: Ain't I a Woman?
In 1851, Truth joined George Thompson, an abolitionist and speaker, on a lecture tour through central and western New York State. In May, she attended the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, where she delivered her famous extemporaneous speech on women's rights, later known as "Ain't I a Woman." Her speech demanded equal human rights for all women as well as for all blacks. Advocating for women and African Americans was dangerous and challenging enough, but being one and doing so was far more difficult. The pressures and severity of her speech did not get to Truth, however. Truth took to the stage with a demanding and composed presence. Audience members were baffled by the way she carried herself and were hesitant to believe that she was even a woman, prompting the name of her speech "Ain't I a Woman?" The convention was organized by Hannah Tracy and Frances Dana Barker Gage, who both were present when Truth spoke. Different versions of Truth's words have been recorded, with the first one published a month later in the Anti-Slavery Bugle by Rev. Marius Robinson, the newspaper owner and editor who was in the audience.Robinson's recounting of the speech included no instance of the question "Ain't I a Woman?" Nor did any of the other newspapers reporting of her speech at the time. Twelve years later, in May 1863, Gage published another, very different, version. In it, Truth's speech pattern had characteristics of Southern slaves, and the speech was vastly different than the one Robinson had reported. Gage's version of the speech became the historic standard version, and is known as "Ain't I a Woman?" because that question was repeated four times. It is highly unlikely that Truth's own speech pattern was Southern in nature, as she was born and raised in New York, and she spoke only upper New York State low-Dutch until she was nine years old.
In contrast to Robinson's report, Gage's 1863 version included Truth saying her 13 children were sold away from her into slavery. Truth is widely believed to have had five children, with one sold away, and was never known to boast more children. Gage's 1863 recollection of the convention conflicts with her own report directly after the convention: Gage wrote in 1851 that Akron in general and the press in particular were largely friendly to the woman's rights convention, but in 1863 she wrote that the convention leaders were fearful of the "mobbish" opponents. Other eyewitness reports of Truth's speech told a calm story, one where all faces were "beaming with joyous gladness" at the session where Truth spoke; that not "one discordant note" interrupted the harmony of the proceedings. In contemporary reports, Truth was warmly received by the convention-goers, the majority of whom were long-standing abolitionists, friendly to progressive ideas of race and civil rights. In Gage's 1863 version, Truth was met with hisses, with voices calling to prevent her from speaking.
According to Frances Gage's recount in 1863, Truth argued, "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain't I a woman?" Truth's " Ain't I a Woman" showed the lack of recognition that Black women received during this time and whose lack of recognition will continue to be seen long after her time. " Black women, of course, were virtually invisible within the protracted campaign for woman suffrage" as said by Davis supports Truth's argument that nobody gives her "any best place" but not only her but Black women in general.
Over the next 10 years, Truth spoke before dozens, perhaps hundreds, of audiences. From 1851 to 1853, Truth worked with Marius Robinson, the editor of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle, and traveled around that state speaking. In 1853, she spoke at a suffragist "mob convention" at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City; that year she also met Harriet Beecher Stowe. In 1856, she traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan, to speak to a group called the "Friends of Human Progress." In 1858, someone interrupted a speech and accused her of being a man; Truth opened her blouse and revealed her breasts.
The Prophetess Sojourner Truth Discusses the Two Different Versions of Her Most Well-Known Speech, One Nearly Unknown and One Very Beloved Yet Mostly Untrue
I believe that white lady meant well, but she took liberties with my story. There was a pint, and I am a woman, but I never did bear thirteen young. There was an audience, and I did stand. At first, hesitant, but then, speaking God’s clear consonants in a voice that all might hear, not with apostrophes feeding on the ends of my words. And I am six feet tall, and some might say, broader than any man. And I was a slave. And my child was taken from me, though I fought to get him back. And I did work hard. And I did suffer long. And I did find the Lord and He did keep me in His bony-chested embrace. And if I showed you my hands, instead of hiding them in my sleeves or in a ball of yarn, you could see my scars, the surgery of bondage. And I have traveled to and fro to speak my Gospel-talk— surely, I’ve got the ear of Jesus. But I forgive that lying woman, because craving is a natural sin. She needed somebody like me to speak for her, and behave the way she imagined I did, so she could imagine herself as a northern mistress. And there I was, dark and old, soon to fold my life into Death’s greedy hand. And in this land, and in this time, somebody who could never shout her down.
by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
OC
Kin 230: White Solar Dog
I pulse in order to love
Realizing loyalty
I seal the process of heart
With the solar tone of intention
I m guided by the power of death.
By recognizing that individual life is the basic operating unit of the life of cosmos, then we can raise our sights to collective transcendence and cosmic unification.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2018-2019.
