Home Work: The truth about Sojourner Truth
field reports from my book The Secret History of Home Economics
<shakes head vigorously, looks around> Well! Pardon the long silence. I started several installments over the last few months. The J. C. Penney bankruptcy made me think about the store’s revolutionary home economics team. All the mask-sewing and bread-baking evoked home economists’ response to World War I. Also I wanted to share an article I wrote about home economics and other career-tech teachers switching to remote instruction. But this newsletter wouldn’t be good for much if it did not herald a book, which I had to finish writing. Which I have now done. I handed in the final manuscript last month.
(Before you hate me for finishing a book during a pandemic, please know that [a] I had a deadline and [b] I don’t have kids.)
Other things I have: an author photo! A full title! The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live. Things I do not yet have: a pre-order link! Apparently that’s coming in late fall.
Today I’ll keep it short and highlight a discovery I made along the way that doesn’t fit into the book at all, a particularly enduring example of White activists cramming African American leaders into stereotypes: Sojourner Truth never said, “Ain’t I a woman?”
You probably learned Truth’s most famous speech as I did, from a text that abolitionist and suffragist Frances Gage published in 1863. The refrain was, “Ar’n’t I a woman?” Here are some of those familiar, ringing phrases:
… Dat man ober dar say dat woman needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to have de best place eberywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gives me any best place, and ar’n’t I a woman? Look at me. Look at my arm. I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me–and ar’n’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it) and bear de lash as well–and ar’n’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen ’em mos’ all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard–and ar’n’t I a woman?
The thing is, those were not Truth's words. Truth had given the speech a dozen years earlier, at an 1851 women’s rights conference. A friend who attended, Marius Robinson, wrote down what he heard in the Anti-Slavery Bugle newspaper about two weeks later. Here’s the closest we have to what Truth actually said, in its entirety:
I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now.
As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman have a pint, and a man a quart — why can’t she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, — for we can’t take more than our pint’ll hold. The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don’t know what to do. Why children, if you have woman’s rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won’t be so much trouble.
I can’t read, but I can hear. I have heard the Bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. The lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept and Lazarus came forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your part? But the women are coming up, blessed be God, and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.
Truth was born Isabella Bomefree in New York State, which did not abolish slavery until 1827. She grew up speaking only Dutch, and people commented, later, on her strong New York Dutch accent. (Here’s an actress approximating what Truth might have sounded like, reciting the 1851 text.) She learned to speak English at age 11 from slave-owners whose first language was also Dutch.
Gage, who was White, “translated” Truth’s words into stereotyped Southern slave dialect. She also seems to have invented passages, and responses to the audience. There is no reason to think that Truth rolled up her sleeve and pointed to her muscular arm, as Gage recounted. Or that she referred to herself as “ole Sojourner.” For that matter, some of what Gage has Truth say is factually inaccurate. Truth had five children, not 13. One was sold away from her; she petitioned the court and got him back.
Such purposeful mistranscription happened frequently—for instance, Harriet Beecher Stowe put dialect in Truth’s mouth in her article “The Libyan Sibyl.” And Truth didn’t like it, according to the Sojourner Truth Project. She prided herself on speaking good English.
Gage acknowledged that she made changes. She thought her rewrite would be more powerful and appealing and further the abolitionist and feminist causes. Evidently Whites who supported civil and women’s rights wanted to hear inspirational African American women sounding like second-class citizens.
The Sojourner Truth Project credits historian Nell Irvin Painter for uncovering the discrepancies. Here are the two full texts, one after another.
Recipe of the Month
As we are cooking from the back of the fridge these days, here's a dish I've been making to use up shriveled vegetables. Adapted lightly from Melissa Clark in the New York Times, who adapted it from a Korean American restaurateur.
Korean Vegetable Pancakes
1/2 c. flour
1/4 c. rice flour
1/4 c. cornstarch
1/2 t. baking powder
3/4 c. ice water
1 large egg, lightly beaten
4 cups shredded vegetables
3 thinly sliced scallions (green and white parts), or 1/3 c. thinly sliced onion/shallots/other allium (dried work fine)
1/4 c. chopped kimchi
Whisk together dry ingredients. Whisk liquid ingredients into dry until smooth. Stir in vegetables. Fry in a small amount of oil in pan.
Substitutions and tips:
- If you don't have rice flour or cornstarch, these will likely be just fine with all flour.
- If you have very wet veg, e.g., summer squash, you could salt and drain ahead of time.
- If you don't have kimchi, add garlic, hot sauce and more vegetables.
- If you rush and make the pancakes huge and turn the heat up so high that they brown really fast (who, me?), you can pop them in a 350 degree oven (or toaster oven) for 10 minutes to ensure they're cooked through.
Dipping sauce options:
- soy sauce mixed with rice or apple cider vinegar, sesame oil, ginger/garlic and a dash of sweetener
- mayo spiked with hot sauce
I adore my toaster oven and will never replace it with a slot toaster. Header photo: "Home economics in college," Dec. 11, 1926, Library of Congress. Image of Sojourner Truth with knitting, 1864, New York Public Library. Read about space food, tel-a-struction and more in the Home Work archives.
Written content © 2020 Danielle Dreilinger. All rights reserved.