The Whole Truth

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

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4.7 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sojourner Truth was a women's rights advocate known best for her famous speech "Ain't I a Woman." But Truth never actually said these words. In fact, much of the Truth we know… is fiction. Depictions from different artists and journalists have tweaked Truth's legacy to fit their messages, giving her a “kaleidoscopic reputation,” according to Nell Irvin Painter, author of Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol.

So how did a speech she never gave make Sojourner Truth one of the most famous women’s suffragists of the 19th century? And what did Truth actually say? Turns out, the whole Truth is even better than fiction.

Guests:

Nell Irvin Painter, author of Sojourner Truth: a Life, a Symbol; Edwards Professor of American History Emerita at Princeton University

Ashleigh Coren, former content strategist for the Smithsonian's Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past initiative

Kim Sajet, director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and host of the Smithsonian's Portraits podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
0:13.2	I'm Lizzie Peabody.
0:26.5	Akron, Ohio, 1851.
0:32.4	A tall black woman strides into the center of a meeting hall as women gather round.
0:38.0	She takes a beat, composes herself, and begins to speak.
0:45.9	Well, children, where there's so much racket, there must be something out of the country.
0:51.3	This is how Sojourner Truth's most famous speech begins.
0:54.3	And this is legendary actress Cicely Tyson,
0:56.1	reenacting it at the U.S. Capitol.
1:02.7	I think between the women's of the North and the Niggins of the South,
1:06.4	all thinking about rights,
1:09.5	you white men are going to be in the fix pretty soon.
1:13.9	Sojourner Truth was an abolitionist, women's rights activist, and traveling speaker,
1:19.1	one of the most prominent voices for justice and equality of her time. And this speech
1:24.1	is one of the most famous women's rights speeches in American history.
1:28.6	Now, if the first woman God ever made was able to take this world and turn that outside down,
1:37.3	all these women's hair together ought to be able to get it back and turn that right side up again.
1:44.3	And now they're asking to do it. You men better let them.
1:49.1	Truth is known today as a symbol of women's rights and a key figure in American history.
1:54.7	Her likeness is found all over the place. She's crisscrossed the globe as a postage stamp.
1:59.5	Joined your web search as a Google doodle,
2:01.8	and even ventured to our neighboring planet as the namesake for the first Mars rover.
	...

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