length in their convention report. Instead, it was Ohio’s “Aunt Fanny,” Frances Dana Gage, who detailed the appearance of Sojourner Truth at the Akron meeting:
The ladies of the movement trembled on seeing a tall, gaunt black woman in a gray dress and white turban, surmounted with an uncouth sun-bonnet, march deliberately into the church, walk with the air of a queen up the aisle, and take her seat upon the pulpit steps. A buzz of disapprobation was heard all over the house, and there fell on the listening ear, “An abolition affair!” “Woman’s rights and niggers!”….
At my request, order was restored, and the business of the Convention went on…. All through these sessions old Sojourner, quiet and reticent…sat crouched against the wall on the corner of the pulpit stairs…. At intermission she was busy selling the “Life of Sojourner Truth,” a narrative of her own strange and adventurous life. Again and again, timorous ones came to me and said, with earnestness, “Don’t let her speak, Mrs. Gage, it will ruin us. Every newspaper in the land will have our cause mixed up with abolition and niggers, and we shall be utterly denounced.” My only answer was, “We shall see when the time comes.”
The second day the work waxed warm. Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Universalist ministers came in to hear and discuss the resolutions presented. One claimed superior rights and privileges for man, on the ground of “superior intellect;” another, because of the “manhood of Christ”…. Another gave us a theological view of the “sin of our first mother.”
There were very few women in those days who dared to “speak in meeting;” and the august teachers of the people were seemingly getting the better of us, while the boys in the galleries, and the sneerers among the pews, were hugely enjoying the discomfiture, as they supposed, of the “strongminded.” Some of the tender-skinned friends were on the point of losing dignity, and the atmosphere betokened a storm. When, slowly from her seat in the corner rose Sojourner Truth, who, till now, had scarcely lifted her head. “Don’t let her speak!” gasped a half a dozen in my ear. She moved slowly and solemnly to the front, laid her old bonnet at her feet, and turned her great speaking eyes to me. There was a hissing sound of disapprobation above and below. I rose and announced “Sojourner Truth,” and begged the audience to keep silent for a few moments.
The tumult subsided at once, and every eye was fixed on this almost Amazon form, which stood nearly six feet high, head erect, and eyes piecing the upper air like one in a dream. At her first word there was a profound hush. She spoke in deep tones, which, though not loud, reached every ear in the house and away through the throng at the doors and windows. [In the following, Sojourner Truth’s speech has been freed of the nineteenth-century dialect style that Gage used in recording it. Gage’s occasional descriptive interjections into the body of the speech also have been eliminated.]
“Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that between the niggers of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?
That man over there say that women needs to be helped into carriages, lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain’t I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [‘Intellect’ someone whispers near.] That’s right, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or nigger’s rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Men had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now that they are asking to do it, the men better let them! Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner has got nothing more to say.”
At Sojourner Truth’s rebuke of the minister who made the point about “intellect,” the audience’s “cheering was loud and long.” When she spoke to the story of Eve, “the first woman God ever made,” Gage said that “almost every sentence elicited deafening applause.” Sojourner Truth “returned to her corner, amid roars of applause, leaving more than one of us with streaming eyes, and hearts beating with gratitude. She had taken us up in her strong arms and carried us,” Gage averred. “I have never in my life seen anything like her magical influence.”
When the speech was over, “hundreds rushed up to shake hands with her,” and Sojourner Truth’s place as a celebrity suffragist was solidified. More than most men or women, black or white, she immediately understood the crucial link between women’s rights and the anti-slavery cause; from the beginning, she could see that women’s needs should not be trivialized nor forced to compete with those of blacks. Earlier than Susan B. Anthony and others who became famous, Sojourner Truth stood tall.
A Currier & Ives print of the Bloomer style, circa 1851. (Library of Congress)
Not all progress is political. Social change can be of at least equal significance, and one of the greatest issues of the 1850s became feminine apparel. Early in 1851, Elizabeth Smith Miller appeared on the streets of Seneca Falls wearing “Turkish trousers.” An affluent and fashionable young mother, she came to visit her father’s cousin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The full, almost skirt-like pants that Miller wore were based on a fashion introduced by English Fanny Kemble, whose stage portrayals of Shakespeare’s Juliet in the 1830s had made her one of America’s first entertainment celebrities.
Both Kemble’s professional and personal life led her to feminism. She had given up her career for a South Carolina planter and soon found that the marriage was a disaster. The law was on his side in every disagreement, including their frequent fights over her sympathy for slaves. When she finally left him, it meant leaving her children, too; she did not see them for more than 20 years. She returned to the stage, and in the midst of what was likely personal turmoil, introduced the shockingly different apparel known as “pantalettes.”
While Kemble was a trendsetter, primarily for reasons of style rather than practicality or health, there were others who advocated dress reform for more serious reasons. A thoughtful listener at the Worcester convention might have been moved to consider these ideas when a letter was read from French agriculturist Helene Marie Weber. After apologizing that “circumstances place it out of my power to visit America” for the October convention, she wrote:
The newspapers both of England and America have done me great injustice. While they have described my apparel with the minute accuracy of professional tailors, they have…charged me with undervaluing the female sex and identifying myself with the other…. I have never wished…to be anything but a woman…. I adopted male attire as a matter of convenience in my business…. I have never had cause to regret my adoption of male attire, and never expect to return to a female toilette….
There is no moral or political principle involved in this question…. [If] the superiority of male dress for all purposes of business and recreation is conceded, it is absurd to argue that we should not avail ourselves of its advantages….
