Women’s Rights and the Akron Speech

Truth spoke at the 1851 Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, connecting women’s equality with the labor and violence experienced by Black women. The speech became a lasting symbol of linked abolitionist and women’s-rights struggle.

The familiar version repeating “Ain’t I a Woman?” appeared twelve years later and imposed a Southern dialect on a New Yorker whose first language was Dutch. It should be identified as Frances Dana Gage’s later reconstruction, not a verbatim transcript.