Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from

Radiotopia. My name is Jody Abergan. This day May 28th 1851 abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojour Truth is in Akron, Ohio,

where she delivers a speech at a women's convention speaking out against both slavery and sexism. An account of her speech and the famous

phrase, Ain't I a woman, would become iconic even if they are not completely accurate.

So let's talk about it. I'm joined as always by Nicole Hemmer of Columbia.

Hello Nicky. Hey Jody. And back with us again is Akila Hughes of the

podcast What a Day and the book obviously and lots more Akila.

Thanks again for doing this.

Hey, thanks for having me.

So, Mickey, we should say right off the bat

that there is a central question at the heart of all this

about whether the most famous line from this speech

was ever actually uttered.

Sure, well I think it's very likely that it was never said.

It doesn't show up in the records back in 1851 when she delivered the speech.

And the actual line, Ain't I a woman, is this kind of southern black

dialect that was used a lot by white people at the times to sort of signify

that the person was black. But so Journey Truth grew up in New York speaking Dutch.

Oh, she's not speaking in this sort of like stereotypical dialect.

It's funny, it's sort of like an old-timey version of white people on Twitter who are pretending to be black,

but they're like missing the beat.

I can't tell you how many times someone, I'm like, this is a bot that has like the back of a

...