Sojourner Truth wasn’t scheduled to speak at the women’s rights convention in Akron in 1851. But she delivered a famous speech challenging preconceived ideas about gender and race at the Universalist Old Stone Church on High Street.
People are still talking about her speech more than 150 years later.
“She was one of the greatest orators who was able somehow to articulate... when it came to the intersection of relationships of race, class, gender, why we should have equity, why women should have a right to the ballot box,” said Towanda Mullins, who has been leading a community effort to honor Truth in Akron with a statue and park plaza.
“The legacy for Sojourner continues today. There are many instances where we still have challenges when it comes to the right to vote, and so that is why we honor her in the work that we're doing today,” Mullins said.
Truth's speech
Part of Akron’s tribute involves educating people about Truth, an abolitionist who was enslaved in New York until she was an adult. Her Akron speech is commonly referred to as “Ain’t I a Woman?” The truth about that speech is historians have found those words are not exactly what she said.
Frances Dana Gage penned the “Ain’t I a Woman?” account of Truth’s speech 12 years after it was delivered and in a southern dialect, said Leianne Neff Heppner, president and CEO of the Summit County Historical Society. But Truth didn’t have a southern accent.
“Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree, was a native Dutch speaker,” she said. “You have to then look at the time period. And so, it's during the Civil War, and Gage is actually appealing to the time period and trying to gather interest and sympathy, putting her in the place of a southern slave woman."
A different version of the speech printed in the Anti-Slavery Bugle a few weeks after it was given is believed to be more accurate.
“She had a way of presenting that was humorous. And that's a side that people don't think about,” Neff Heppner said. “She really was engaging to her crowd. So, she used materials that were familiar to them, like Bible quotes, and related it then to humankind about eating and about raising children and about the role of women in the community.”
Creating the statue
Truth’s words also inspired Akron artist Woodrow Nash, who designed the statue in her honor.
“She was a big woman, and she bragged about how she could outwork a man and out eat him, you know, all these things,” Nash said. “I tried to put all that in the work.”
The statue design is a departure from Nash’s typical work, internationally collected and notably featured in Beyoncé's “Black Is King” video series.
“My art style is African Nouveau,” Nash said. “My work that I do is more stylized, and the Sojourner piece is more realistic.”
Working on the project with the help of Jeff Willis, Nash also drew inspiration from old music and speeches.
“I listened to music from the Library of Congress — work songs, these men were on chain gangs — and old sermons from uneducated but inspired preachers,” Nash said. “It put me in a position where, you know, I could experience timelessness, and it almost took me back to where she might have been and what she was doing.”
Cast in Cleveland
At Studio Foundry in Cleveland, workers created molds from Nash’s design. On a cool fall day, they poured the bronze, heated to nearly 2,000 degrees, into molds buried in a six-foot-deep pit. After everything cooled, workers opened the molds with axes and sledgehammers before moving on to the finishing work.
“I love the project and the justice of it all,” said Mark Olistky, manager at Studio Foundry. “I think everybody feels that way that's part of it.”
The completed statue will reside in a park plaza next to the United Way of Summit & Medina on North High Street, where Truth once stood in 1851, inviting people to reflect upon her legacy for years to come. The roughly $2.2 million project has been years in the making. Organizers plan to unveil the statue on the anniversary of Truth’s speech in May 2024.
“I want it to spark empowerment. I want to spark a sense of 'I may not be like others.' Sojourner Truth wasn't,” Mullins said. “I want it to spark that it's OK to be different and unique. I want it to spark that you can always speak up like Truth, always live in your truth. You are good enough.”
