I recently read a short book by the classicist Mary Beard called Women and Power, in which she writes about the long history of silencing women. She gives examples from antiquity. In “The Odyssey,” the faithful wife Penelope of the long-absent Odysseus comes down from her private quarters to tell the assembled suitors to sing a more cheerful song. Her son Telemachus steps forward to rebuke her for speaking in public and sends her back to her loom.
Fast forward to the nineteenth century, when it becomes accceptable for women to speak, but appropriate only when they speak about women’s issues.
One of the most popular entries in anthologies of female oratory, she says, is Sojourner Truth’s “And Ain’t I a Woman.” It is written as a transcription of a southern drawl. But, writes Beard, the speech was written up a decade after she said whatever she said. Beard says the language was written by Abolitionists to fit their message. Sojourner Truth was born in Ulster County, New York, and her first language was Dutch.
Sojourner Truth was a historical figure, a real human being, a woman of color who spoke in public and earned her place in history. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have an accurate transcription of the powerful speech that broke the taboos of her age. She must have been a powerful and compelling speaker. She spoke out at a time when women were not supposed to speak in public, and black women were not supposed to speak at all.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Nell Painter wrote the definitive biography of Truth, which I heartily recommend. Clarifies much about the heroism of her life.
“spoke out at a time”-
Projected number of GOP women in the U.S. House in 2020- 11, as contrasted with 187 men. Women silence themselves when they vote Republican.
Religions silence women in many ways like limiting their roles within the church, demanding they bear children they can’t afford, encouraging homeschooling that saps their time and energy. Still, women continue to raise their daughters and sons in those churches.
Other people’s manner of speaking is always a problem. The Cockney over in Britain marked the lower class. An Itallian accent speaking English has been the staple of screenwriters using archetype to shorten a video attempt. Southerners are routinely cast as intellectually inferior (think Clark Griswald’s cousin Eddie). Then there is the know-it-all voice of the nerd kid, always infantile and nasal. Did I forget African-American speech habits, which are as varied as European tongues, but are generally grouped together in the mind of the reader.
I wonder if the 250+ ethnicities in Nigeria can tell each other apart by tongue. How about the several million Lao people in southern China? One of the most important thing to teach our children is that ethnicity is just as much about speech and belief as it is about race (a biological misnomer improperly applied to humans?). I struggle with how to do this. At the basis of so many foreign policy mistakes is our own misunderstanding of cultural differences within other peoples.
Just like Spanish speaking people from the Americas cannot be defined by one amorphous label as Latinos (is there a plural of Latinx?). Country, state, and regional differences apply, just like in the English speaking world.
True, and profoundly wrong for teachers to not provide this important context when teaching this speech.
Sojourner Truth vs. Donald Trump: Truth by KO in the first round. When people organized at Seneca Falls in 1848 for the rights of white women, it created a worthy occasion to advocate for the rights of all people at the Women’s Convention in 1851. The same is true today. I felt that palpably multi-everything spirit at the Bernie-AOC rally in Venice, CA on Saturday. Don’t let the oligarchy convince you otherwise: Progressivism is the true “big tent”.