Page:W. E. B. Du Bois - The Gift of Black Folk.pdf/275

Rh need for courtesy, the sin of Eve, etc. Most of the white women, being “perfect ladies,” according to the ideals of the time, were not used to speaking in public and finally to their dismay the black woman arose from the corner. The audience became silent.

Sojourner Truth was an Amazon nearly six feet high, black, erect and with piercing eyes, and her speech in reply was to the point:

“Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to have the best places every whar. Nobody eber help me into carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best place” (and raising herself to her full height and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked), “and ai’n’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm!” (And she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her tremendous muscular power.) “I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and ai’n’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear de lash as well—and ai’n’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern and seen ’em mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard—and ai’n’t I a woman? Den dey talks ’bout dis ting in de head—what dis dey