A Refusal To Be Silenced

There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. -- Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth was a woman ahead of her time. This is evident in her life and work and is reflected in the speeches that have survived her.

Though in actuality powerless, she projected an image of power. Indeed, Sojourner Truth was a fearless creature. Even in the midst of the most cruel forms of oppression, in which she suffered physical and psychological abuse, Sojourner Truth refused to be silenced. Where she saw evil, she named it; where she experienced contradictions in the society, she identified them; where she saw deception, she exposed it.

Today slavery has been abolished, blacks vote, and women have been enfranchised. Yet oppressive structures continue to exist in our society. Oppression functions in some of the same ways, though it has taken new shapes in our contemporary context.

As in Sojourner Truth's time, black women are still perceived as less than white women, white men, and black men. Black women are still considered to be primarily servants, even as they relate to black men - hence, servants of servants. As they did then, black women's lives represent the point where racism, sexism, and classism converge.

Recognizing this, Sojourner Truth saw the inadequacy of the tendency of many to address only one form of oppression. While remaining a steadfast abolitionist and women's rights advocate, she consistently challenged black men for their sexism, white women for their racism, and white men for both their racism and sexism.

To white women and men, Sojourner Truth raised up the dualism perpetuated in the society's conception of womanhood. More than anyone else, she pointed to the radical differences between the lives of white women and black women. Black women were certainly not accorded the privileges and protections that white women enjoyed.

Sojourner rhetorically asked, "Ain't I a woman?" In this same vein, recognizing that "Negro suffrage" meant black male suffrage, one could say that she was also asking, "Ain't I black?" In other words, Sojourner Truth did what few people were doing - she raised her voice in behalf of black women. It was Sojourner Truth's experience as a black woman that gave her the insight to be broad in her analysis yet concrete at the same time. The complex nature of black women's reality demanded this kind of approach, and it still does.

BLACK WOMEN TODAY WOULD DO well to build upon what Sojourner Truth started in the struggle for black women's liberation. But Sojourner Truth offers an additional challenge for a very specialized group of people - black women in ministry. Though not an ordained minister, she considered herself a preacher - a preacher who, at her commissioning, was given a name indicative of her calling.

God gave her the name "Sojourner" because she was to travel "up an' down the land showin' the people their sins and bein' a sign unto them"; and "Truth" because she was to speak the truth to the people. Having been so commissioned, Sojourner Truth moved about preaching her favorite sermon, which was not mere pietistic rhetoric but an account of her life from the time of her parents' enslavement to the time of her own encounter with Jesus, the one who heard her cries even when no one else would or could.

It was quite clear that Sojourner's social and political justice activities were not for personal gain but attempts to reorder the society so that it might better reflect the will of God. On one occasion, when Frederick Douglass ended a speech in dismay, Sojourner rose and exclaimed, "Frederick, is God dead?" As long as there is God, believed Sojourner, there is hope and assurance for God's people.

Sojourner Truth provided a challenge for black women in general and black women in ministry in particular. To black women she says we must look at black women's reality wholistically. Racism, sexism, and classism cannot be radically separated, but they all must be dealt with as interrelated structures of oppression. Likewise, to black women in ministry, the challenge is that a call from God is one not to a false notion of pietistic spirituality but toward wholistic liberation.

As a black woman theologian in the 20th century seeking to do theology which is meaningful to black women, I find the tradition that Sojourner Truth represents to be most significant in articulating the meaning of the Christian faith for black women - past, present, and future.

Jacquelyn Grant was assistant professor of systematic theology at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia when this article appeared.