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“A surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence.” – Sonia Sotomayor

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Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”  How does this quote relate to women and the struggle for equal rights?  How can you use it to inspire your own actions?

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Please see the attached video

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See this short video

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Bessie Coleman | 3 Minute History Cartoon

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https://youtu.be/SASyk2tFYGY

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Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter best known for her uncompromising and brilliantly colored self-portraits that deal with such themes as identity, the human body, and death. Although she denied the connection, she is often identified as a Surrealist. The Louvre acquired Frida Kahlo's work The Frame (c. 1938), making her the first 20th-century Mexican artist to be included in the museum’s collection.

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Civil Rights Activist
Rosa Parks was a key figure of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1943, Parks became a member of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and served as secretary until 1956. Parks challenged legal segregation in Alabama and ignited the boycott of the municipal bus company which lasted 381 days. On November 13, 1956, the US Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision declaring segregating bus seating unconstitutional. Rosa Parks did not refuse to give her seat because she was tired, the truth was she was protesting unfair treatment.

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In 1980, US President Jimmy Carter declared the week of March 8th National Women's History Week. He stated, "too often the women unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength, and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well". In 1987, Congress passed a resolution declaring the month of March Women's History Month.

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Who is your favorite historical female figure?  What do you admire about her?

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first women's rights convention. Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 drew hundreds of people to fight for rights such as, education, independence, voting, right to run for public office, and to be treated as individuals. Many of the suffragists were also abolitionists as well.

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Born in England, her family immigrated to the United States in 1832. In 1849, she was the first woman in the US to graduate from medical school and was considered the first modern-day woman doctor of medicine. Dr. Blackwell established the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.

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1884 -1962

Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, served as the First Lady of the United States for 12 years. At the time, Eleanor was a controversial First Lady for speaking out about gender and race issues. She was the first First Lady to hold regular press conferences, write newspaper and magazine columns, host a weekly radio show, and speak at a national party convention. After the death of her husband, Eleanor continued to be involved in politics, even serving as the first United Nations delegate from the United States. She gave a voice to the voiceless and consistently challenged roadblocks that were put in her path. At the time of her death, the New York Times regarded her as “one of the most esteemed women in the world”.

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Margaret Thatcher was the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She served from 1975 to 1990. Thatcher was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century.

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Golda Meir helped found the state of Israel in 1948. She was the Forth Prime Minister and 1st woman Prime Minister of Israel. Meir pressed for peace in the Middle East.

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Daughter of the first Prime Minister of India, Nehru, Indira Gandhi served as the 3rd Prime Minister and only female Prime Minister of India.

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The world's first woman Prime Minister

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First Female Vice President of the United States
Kamala Harris has served as the Attorney General for the state of California and 2016 became the second African American woman and first South Asian American to win a seat in the US Senate.

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Born in Czechoslovakia, Albright and her family immigrated to the US after a communist coup in 1948. Albright became a US citizen in 1957 and earned a B.A. in political science with honors from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in Public Law and Government at Columbia University in 1976.  In 1993 she was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations by President Clinton and served in the position until her appointment as Secretary of State in 1996.
As Secretary of State, Albright promoted the expansion of NATO eastward into the former Soviet bloc nations and the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons from the former Soviet republics to rogue nations, successfully pressed for military intervention under NATO auspices during the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo in 1999, supported the expansion of free-market democratization and the creation of civil societies in the developing world, favored the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on Global Climate Change, and furthered the normalization of relations with Vietnam.

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1933 - 2020

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. She was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and has served until her death in 2020. Before assuming office, Ruth worked as a professor at Rutgers School of Law and Columbia Law school. She also worked as a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and was appointed to their board of directors. After becoming a judge for the Supreme Court, Ruth used her power to advocate for the rights of women as a constitutional principle.

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1954 - Present

One of the most famous TV personalities of our time, Oprah Winfrey has changed the world with her ideas since she was only 19-years-old. As a teenager, she began co-anchoring the local evening news and soon began a career in daytime talk shows, where she became an incredibly influential woman. She is known for breaking both gender and race barriers, becoming one of the richest African-American woman in the world. Oprah Winfrey is also one of the greatest philanthropists in American history. She has shared her difficult life story on many occasions, encouraging others to face challenges with adversity. She currently is the owner of several media companies and commits her life to philanthropic work.

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Malala Yousafzai is an activist for female education and the youngest person to ever win the Nobel Prize. When she was just 11-years-old, she wrote a blog for BBC under a pseudonym detailing her life under Taliban rule, their attempts to take control of the region she lived in, and the lack of access to education for young women. Three years later, she was shot while boarding a bus to school. She had a long road to recovery, but afterwards used her voice to promote her views across the world. Now she works as an activist for the right to education, specifically for females, and travels around the world speaking about her experiences.

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First American Woman in Space
https://www.history.com/news/sally-ride-first-astronaut-sexism

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Director, Producer and Writer.
Ava DuVernay was the first African American woman to receive the Golden Globe nomination for best director with the critically acclaimed movie Selma.

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Although women have made tremendous progress, there are still areas where women face challenges. What can be done to further advance women in education, politics, medicine, STEM, and more?

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Did you know?...

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Contents

1. Who Was Sojourner Truth?

2. Walking from Slavery to Freedom

3. Sojourner Truth, First Black Woman to Sue White Man-And Win

4. Sojourner Truth's Spiritual Calling

5. 'Ain't I A Woman?' Speech and Controversy

6. Sojourner Truth During the Civil War

7. Sojourner Truth Quotes

8. Sojourner Truth's Later Years

Sojourner Truth was an African American evangelist, abolitionist, women's rights activist and author who was born into slavery before escaping to freedom in 1826. After gaining her freedom, Truth preached about abolitionism and equal rights for all. She became known for a speech with the famous refrain, "Ain't I a Woman?" that she was said to have delivered at a women's convention in Ohio in 1851, although accounts of that speech (and whether Truth ever used that refrain) have since been challenged by historians. Truth continued her crusade throughout her adult life, earning an audience with President Abraham Lincoln and becoming one of the world's best-known human rights crusaders.
LISTEN: Sojourner's Truth on HISTORY This Week Podcast
Who Was Sojourner Truth?

Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree in 1797 to enslaved parents James and Elizabeth Baumfree, in Ulster County, New York. Around age nine, she was sold at an auction to John Neely for $100, along with a flock of sheep.

Neely was a cruel and violent master who beat the young girl regularly. She was sold two more times by age 13 and ultimately ended up at the West Park, New York, home of John Dumont and his second wife Elizabeth.

Around age 18, Isabella fell in love with an enslaved man named Robert from a nearby farm. But the couple was not allowed to marry since they had separate owners. Instead, Isabella was forced to marry another enslaved man owned by Dumont named Thomas. She eventually bore five children: James, Diana, Peter, Elizabeth and Sophia.
WATCH: Women's History Documentaries on HISTORY Vault
Walking from Slavery to Freedom

At the turn of the 19th century, New York started legislating emancipation, but it would take over two decades for liberation to come for all enslaved people in the state.

In the meantime, Dumont promised Isabella he'd grant her freedom on July 4, 1826, "if she would do well and be faithful." When the date arrived, however, he had a change of heart and refused to let her go.

Incensed, Isabella completed what she felt was her obligation to Dumont and then escaped his clutches, infant daughter in tow. She later said, "I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right."

In what must have been a gut-wrenching choice, she left her other children behind because they were still legally bound to Dumont.

Isabella made her way to New Paltz, New York, where she and her daughter were taken in as free people by Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen. When Dumont came to reclaim his "property," the Van Wagenens offered to buy Isabella's services from him for $20 until the New York Anti-Slavery Law emancipating all enslaved people took effect in 1827; Dumont agreed.

Sojourner Truth, First Black Woman to Sue White Man-And Win

After the New York Anti-Slavery Law was passed, Dumont illegally sold Isabella's five-year-old son Peter. With the help of the Van Wagenens, she filed a lawsuit to get him back.

Months later, Isabella won her case and regained custody of her son. She was the first Black woman to sue a white man in a United States court and prevail.

Sojourner Truth's Spiritual Calling

The Van Wagenens had a profound impact on Isabella's spirituality and she became a fervent Christian. In 1829, she moved to New York City with Peter to work as a housekeeper for evangelist preacher Elijah Pierson.

She left Pierson three years later to work for another preacher, Robert Matthews. When Elijah Pierson died, Isabella and Matthews were accused of poisoning him and of theft but were eventually acquitted.

Living among people of faith only emboldened Isabella's devoutness to Christianity and her desire to preach and win converts. In 1843, with what she believed was her religious obligation to go forth and speak the truth, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth and embarked on a journey to preach the gospel and speak out against slavery and oppression.

'Ain't I A Woman?' Speech and Controversy

In 1844, Truth joined a Massachusetts abolitionist organization called the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, where she met leading abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and effectively launched her career as an equal rights activist.

Among Truth's contributions to the abolitionist movement was the speech she delivered at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851, where she spoke powerfully about equal rights for Black women. Twelve years later, Frances Gage, a white abolitionist and president of the Convention, published an account of Truth's words in the National Anti-Slavery Standard. In her account, Gage wrote that Truth used the rhetorical question, "Ar'n't I a Woman?" to point out the discrimination Truth experienced as a Black woman.

Various details in Gage's account, however, including that Truth said she had 13 children (she had five) and that she spoke in dialect have since cast doubt on its accuracy. Contemporaneous reports of Truth's speech did not include this slogan and quoted Truth in standard English. In later years, this slogan was further distorted to "Ain't I a Woman?", reflecting the false belief that as a formerly enslaved woman, Truth would have had a Southern accent. Truth was, in fact, a proud New Yorker.

There is little doubt, nonetheless, that Truth's speech-and many others she gave throughout her adult life-moved audiences. Another account of Truth's 1851 speech, published in a newspaper about a month later, reported her saying, "I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?"

Truth's powerful rhetoric won her audiences with leading women's rights activists of her day, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
READ MORE: Early Women's Rights Activists Wanted Much More than Suffrage
Sojourner Truth During the Civil War

Like another famous escaped enslaved woman, Harriet Tubman, Truth helped recruit Black soldiers during the Civil War. She worked in Washington, D.C., for the National Freedman's Relief Association and rallied people to donate food, clothes and other supplies to Black refugees.

Her activism for the abolitionist movement gained the attention of President Abraham Lincoln, who invited her to the White House in October 1864 and showed her a Bible given to him by African Americans in Baltimore.

While Truth was in Washington, she put her courage and disdain for segregation on display by riding on whites-only streetcars. When the Civil War ended, she tried exhaustively to find jobs for freed Black Americans weighed down with poverty.

Later, she unsuccessfully petitioned the government to resettle formerly enslaved people on government land in the West.

Sojourner Truth Quotes

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them."

"Then that little man in Black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him."

And what is that religion that sanctions, even by its silence, all that is embraced in the 'Peculiar Institution'? If there can be any thing more diametrically opposed to the religion of Jesus, than the working of this soul-killing system - which is as truly sanctioned by the religion of America as are her ministers and churches-we wish to be shown where it can be found."

"Now, if you want me to get out of the world, you had better get the women votin' soon. I shan't go till I can do that."

Sojourner Truth's Later Years

In 1867, Truth moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where some of her daughters lived. She continued to speak out against discrimination and in favor of woman's suffrage. She was especially concerned that some civil rights leaders such as Frederick Douglass felt equal rights for Black men took precedence over those of Black women.

Truth died at home on November 26, 1883. Records show she was age 86, yet her memorial tombstone states she was 105. Engraved on her tombstone are the words, "Is God Dead?" a question she once asked a despondent Frederick Douglass to remind him to have faith.

Truth left behind a legacy of courage, faith and fighting for what's right and honorable, but she also left a legacy of words and songs including her autobiography, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, which she dictated in 1850 to Olive Gilbert since she never learned to read or write.

Perhaps Truth's life of Christianity and fighting for equality is best summed up by her own words in 1863: "Children, who made your skin white? Was it not God? Who made mine Black? Was it not the same God? Am I to blame, therefore, because my skin is Black? .... Does not God love colored children as well as white children? And did not the same Savior die to save the one as well as the other?"

Sources

Sojourner Truth: Ain't I A Woman? National Park Service.

Sojourner Truth: A Life of Legacy and Faith. Sojourner Truth Institute.

Sojourner Truth Meets Abraham Lincoln-On Equal Ground. Biography.

Sojourner Truth. National Park Service.

Sojourner Truth. WHMN: National Women's History Museum.

Sojourner's Words and Music. Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee.

Truth, Sojourner. American National Biography.

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Who Was Sojourner Truth? Walking from Slavery to Freedom Sojourner Truth, First Black Woman to Sue White Man-And Win Sojourner Truth's Spiritual Calling 'Ain't I A Woman?' Speech and Controversy Sojourner Truth During the Civil War Sojourner Truth Quotes Sojourner Truth's Later Years Sojourner Truth was an African American evangelist, abolitionist, women's rights activist and author who was born into slavery before escaping to freedom in 1826.

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https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/first-lady-michelle-obama

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Ringing the Justice Bell | Women's Suffrage | Highlights Kids

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https://youtu.be/QL_9-8pZp9U

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Susan B. Anthony cofounded the National Woman Suffrage Association, however, fought for many reforms such as abolition, temperance, education, and labor. In 1888, Anthony founded the International Council of Women. Susan B. Anthony tested the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1872 by casting a vote in the Presidential Election in Rochester NY; she was arrested, convicted and fined. Anthony passed away in 1906, 14 years before the passage of the 19th Amendment.