Sojourner Truth and Booker T. Washington Speech Transcripts

The National Archives Store is pleased to offer this set of historically significant speeches by Sojourner Truth and Booker T. Washington. Printed in their entirety, the speeches were delivered more than 40 years apart.

At the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention held in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth presented what is now recognized as one of the most famous abolitionist and women’s rights speeches in American history. In “Ain’t I A Woman?” She spoke to the “racket” of all the talking about rights, that things were out of kilter with the “negroes of the South, and the women of the North” and that “the white men will be in a fix pretty soon.”

On September 18, 1895, Booker T. Washington was selected to speak at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. This speech is known as the "Atlanta Compromise," and was the first speech delivered by an African American to a racially-mixed audience in the South. Washington suggested that African Americans should not agitate for political and social equality, but should instead work hard, earn respect, and acquire vocational training to participate in the economic development of the South. By doing so, eventually, he stated, African Americans would gain the respect of white society and be granted the rights of full citizenship.