Through her work as an itinerant Methodist evangelist beginning in 1828, Isabella Baumfree (who changed her name to the more descriptive Sojourner Truth in 1841) met lecturers on abolition and women's rights. She joined in their cause and soon incorporated many of their visions into her sermons and speeches.
She is most widely known for her 1851 speech "Ain't I a Woman" given in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. When this speech was transcribed by Frances Dana Barker Gage and widely distributed twelve years later, it was written in the dialect of a southern African American. Sojourner Truth was in fact born 50 miles west of New York City and spoke only Dutch until she was nine, and the original title was "Aren't I a Woman?" Both versions can be seen here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain%27t_I_a_Woman%3F
