Lesson Two
The Truth about Truth (& Anthony)
Becoming grounded in the field of Gender & Sexuality Studies benefits greatly from
learning a bit about the history of women and sexual minorities in the United States.
While most students are aware that women in the US did not have the right to vote
until 1920, fewer students are familiar with many of the other limitations placed on
women, with how women (and allies) have organized to resist these limitations, and
what the changing experiences of sexual minorities have been across US history. As we
move through the quarter together, we will be reading some historical documents that
help illuminate the lived experiences of women and sexual minorities, as well as their
efforts at resistance. In many cases, these documents serve the dual function of
showing concepts we are talking about in class in action in real life.
Last week, we talked about the First Wave of feminist activism in the United States,
which originated in the early 1800s and which focused on women’s right to vote. It is
highly likely that you have heard the name Sojourner Truth before, and you may have
read her famous “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech. Maybe you noticed that the speech we
read for class this week doesn’t include the phrase, “Ain’t I a woman?” That’s because
Truth’s speech at the 1851 Ohio Women’s Rights Convention was not recorded. The
most accurate record of her speech is believed to be that documented by her good
friend Reverend Marius Robinson, who was present when she gave the speech and who
took notes on it; he published his transcript of her speech just a month after she gave
it. More than a decade later, white feminist and abolitionist Frances Grange published
“Ain’t I A Woman,” changing the words significantly and writing the speech as if it had
been spoken by a woman with the stereotypical accent of a southern Black slave. In
fact, Sojourner Truth was Afro-Dutch; her first language was Dutch, and she was born
and raised in New York state. She didn’t start learning English until she was at least 11
years old, and spoke English with a heavy Dutch accent, not a southern one (she never
lived in the American South).
Please read, look at the images, and listen to the videos about the life of Sojourner
Truth available through the National Women’s History Museum
https://www.womenshistory.org/exhibits/sojourner-truth
As you are watching/reading/listening, pay attention to what is new to you about
Sojourner Truth:
Did you know that the “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech was made up by someone
else?
What else about her life is new or surprising to you?
Why do you think the largely fabricated “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech resonated so
much with American feminists across generations?
2
This content is protected and may not be shared, uploaded, or distributed without the express
permission of the author. © 2020 Katja M. Guenther, University of California, Riverside
katja@ucr.edu
(Last year, during the GSST 1S lecture, a student commented that Truth also removed
her shirt during her 1851 speech, which I found to be a surprising claim; I subsequently
researched this and learned it was a myth propagated by trans activist Laverne Cox
(and maybe others). For a woman to remove her clothing in public—let alone at a
suffragist meeting—during this era would have been widely documented and discussed;
there is no historical evidence to even hint that this ever happened. Why do you think it
would matter if it did or did not happen?).
Susan B. Anthony is probably another familiar name to you. Born in
Massachusetts in 1820, and spending most of her life as a resident of New York,
Anthony was a white woman who opposed slavery and advocated for women’s rights.
She became involved in the abolition movement as a teenager, was a member of the
Underground Railroad network that helped Black slaves escape the American South to
Canada, and became one of the most visible leaders of the suffrage movement. She
was a rousing speaker, and she supported herself entirely by giving paid lectures on
issues like abolition, temperance,1 and suffrage. Anthony became best friends with
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another white woman leader of the suffrage movement;
Stanton, who lived with her husband and their seven children, dedicated a bedroom in
her home to Anthony, and biographers of both women note that they spent more time
with each other than with any other human being in their lifetimes. (There is sometimes
also innuendo that Anthony and Stanton were lovers—I am not aware of concrete
evidence to support this, although there is compelling historical evidence that Anthony
was a lesbian who had sexual/romantic relationships with at least two other women in
the suffrage movement. Most who have studied her life see Anthony as “married” to her
work rather to relationships. See Lillian Faderman’s book To Believe in Women: What
Lesbians Did for America for a compelling account of the many contributions of lesbian
women to social progress in 19th and early 20th century America). While Anthony was
excited to be alive when slavery ended, she died fourteen years before American
women were granted the right to vote.
Stanton was a controversial figure. She was unusually outspoken as a woman for
her era, she never married or had children (as women were expected to do), and she
appeared regularly in public, advocating for the rights of Blacks and women. She
1 The temperance movement sought to restrict/ban the production and sale of alcohol in the US in
the mid-18th and early-19th centuries. Temperance was seen as a women’s issue both because at that
time women were understood to be the moral guardians of their husbands and children and because
women were so often victimized by men who drank. If they were married to a man with a drinking
problem, women could not seek protection from physical abuse, stop men from gambling away the
family’s funds, nor seek divorce with any ease. If they did manage to get their husband to initiate
divorce, they were almost guaranteed to lose custody of their children and to lose their income.
Alcoholism was also a leading contributor to men abandoning their wives and/or having extra-marital
affairs that resulted in the birth of out-of-wedlock children. Drinking alcohol was thus seen as a serious
social issue and one that had unique effects for women. Thanks in large part to the organizing of women
temperance activists, the production and sale of alcohol was banned in the US in the period known as the
Prohibition from 1920 until 1933.
3
This content is protected and may not be shared, uploaded, or distributed without the express
permission of the author. © 2020 Katja M. Guenther, University of California, Riverside
katja@ucr.edu
routinely received death threats, and often traveled with two armed guards. In 1850,
Anthony was arrested for casting a false ballot as she voted in the November election,
seventy years before women won the right to vote. Reading #17 documents her speech
to the judge.
In 2019, leaders in New York announced that they would be unveiling a statue of
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in New York City’s Central Park. The
statue would be only the 6th statute in New York City to feature women, whereas over
150 public statues in New York City feature men; there are 23 statues featuring men in
Central Park, and this will be the first statue in the park to feature women. There was
an immediate outcry that the statue failed to represent the diversity of the suffrage
movement, and the statue was redesigned to include Sojourner Truth (Truth was a
frequent visitor to Stanton’s home, as was Anthony, but it’s unknown if Truth and
Anthony ever knew each other). You can see a picture of the planned statue (which I
believe will be in bronze) here: https://www.theguardian.com/usnews/2019/oct/21/new-york-central-park-first-sculpture-honoring-women
Self-Assessment (not to be submitted, just for your own reflection; best completed
after completing the reading)
1. Why in her argument with Judge Hunt does Susan B. Anthony state that she
cannot get a trial by a jury of her peers (see top of second column, page 126)?
2. What do Sojourner Truth and Susan B. Anthony seem to have in common? What
about their life experiences and beliefs seem to have been different?
3. How is the lack of statues of women in New York City and in Central Park
evidence of patriarchy? What elements of patriarchal structure that Johnson
discusses are evident in this underrepresentation?
4. What arguments would you make in favor of including Sojourner Truth in the
final statue design?
