I often wear a pendant that includes her image and her words: "If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it." Her name was Sojourner Truth. A staunch defender of the rights of women and an abolitionist, Sojourner inspires my determination to continue to fight for equality for women, citizens of color and children left behind. A brilliant but illiterate woman, she was a great orator and powerful presence who possessed great courage and determination. She was born into and lived the better part of three decades in slavery, but dedicated her life to combating slavery and her gender from second-class citizenship. She never gave up talking or fighting for justice and equality.
Sojourner challenged the racial and gender caste system of slavery by suing for the return of a son sold away from her, one of the first black women to ever sue in a court of law and prevail over a white man in American history. She got thrown off but kept getting back on Washington, D.C., streetcars until they let her ride, desegregating the system in the process.
As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, it is important to remember that in so many private and public ways, women have always been at the forefront of or the backbone of every important social movement. Sojourner was a friend and colleague of many of the abolitionist leaders of her day including Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, and William Lloyd Garrison, and she met Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln.
Thousands and thousands of women across the globe have given so much in the quest for a better world. Women have always stepped forward to accept the challenge a moral moment presents, serving as the catalysts and implementers of change. Our collective history is full of women who have mustered the courage to persist for justice..
Sojourner stood up with fiery eloquence to opponents and threatening crowds who tried to stop her from speaking. When a hostile white man told her that the hall where she was scheduled to speak would be burnt down if she spoke, she replied, "Then I will speak to the ashes."
When taunted while speaking in favor of women's rights by some white men who asked if she was really a woman, she bared her breasts and famously retorted, "Ain't I a woman?," detailing the back-breaking double burden of slavery's work and childbearing she had endured.
When heckled by a white man in her audience who said he didn't care anymore about her antislavery talk than for an old flea bite, she snapped back, "Then the Lord willing, I'll keep you scratching."
And when decrying her exclusion from America's life and Constitution she asked, "God, what ails this Constitution? I feels for my rights and don't feel any there." She said God replied, "Sojourner, there some little weasels in it." Since Sojourner Truth's day, black and white and brown and other excluded and marginalized women have been trying to ferret out the weasels in the Constitution and our national life and to build a just America for themselves and their children.
If Sojourner were alive today, I feel certain she would be standing before crowds of people roaring about the injustice and inequality still challenging so many poor children and children of color in America. I feel certain she would be standing with the Children's Defense Fund and with the Black Community Crusade for Children believing as I and many believe that our children face the worst crisis since slavery and deserve equality in education and opportunity in their country.
In this global economy, no nation can remain strong without a well-educated, high-quality workforce. Yet a toxic cocktail of poverty, illiteracy, racial disparities, violence, massive incarceration and family breakdown is sentencing millions of children to dead end and hopeless lives and threatens to undermine the past half century of racial and social progress.
To meet the challenges our country faces today, it's imperative that we muster the courage and determination of Sojourner Truth. Now is the time for young women and mothers and grandmothers of all races and faiths and all others to demand that as we get our fiscal house in order -- America must invest in our children. We need to show we are decent and sensible and moral enough to care for our children and prepare them for successful adulthood. We must be like a swarm of fleas, biting the big dog of injustice, keeping him scratching until all our children have hope and a future worth striving for.
Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information on the Black Community Crusade for Children (BCCC) visit www.childrensdefense.org/bccc.
Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender
- Thank you
http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/sojour.htm
Power is the answer; power is where it is at. Where are women coming from? Women are much more resilient than men; they have had to be. Just do it Ladies! You will make men face up to reality.
I am male and humbled; I don't want a woman barefoot and pregnant; I want an equal that I can respect.
There is astounding beauty in intellect and strength!
I had to take a deep breath.
I have to face the fact, once again, that I'm not considered a "real" woman since I haven't married or bred. Even though I've made it past age 40. Some of my enthusiasm for this special day has gone away.
But today I worked with a classroom full of young women and men preparing to be teachers and we looked at gender inequality. In my 44 years, in comparison to their 20-21, we have come a long way. The don't see what we faced. They haven't had to fight as hard. They will become more aware as they get older of course but it is good to know that their battles in some sectors are getting easier than ours. Our battles were easier than our mothers'. Perhaps theirs were easier than their mothers' and so on, back for a while.
I look at my youngest niece now and hope that she can always have the same optimism she has now. I want the light in her eyes to radiate upon all she sees. I've seen far too many dull, aching eyes in my lifetime as I've worked with young girls, mothers, grandmothers. Today should be a day to renew our hope and tighten our resolve for the ones who come after us. One day they shall be equal and these wars over bodies and reproduction, over wages and education will all be ancient history.
I can see that day in my niece's eyes. They sparkle with the sun and with the hope of tomorrow.
I do not support white women's rights to be superior.
Especially with one foot with women's groups (mostly white women) and the other with their oppressive men, who also oppress them.