Site of Sojourner Truth's 'Ain't I a Woman' Speech

Address High Street at East Market Street

In May 1851 the Akron Women's Rights Convention gathered in the Old Stone Church on the corner of High and East Market streets, and Sojourner Truth — born enslaved in New York, by then a travelling preacher and abolitionist — rose to speak. The address that has come down to history as "Ain't I a Woman?" was given here, in the heart of what is now downtown Akron.

The original church was demolished in 1881; the site today is part of the United Way of Summit County campus. A bronze marker mounted in the small plaza beside the building names Truth and quotes a fragment of the speech. It is a quiet, unremarkable spot — easy to walk past — but it is one of the most significant sites in the history of American oratory.

The marker is on a public plaza and accessible any time.

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The widely quoted version of the speech — with the famous refrain "and ain't I a woman?" and stereotyped Southern dialect — was published twelve years after the event by Frances Gage, an Akron abolitionist who attended the convention. Earlier transcripts of the speech, including one in the Anti- Slavery Bugle just three weeks after Truth spoke, contain neither the refrain nor the dialect: Truth, born in upstate New York, spoke Dutch as her first language and English with a New York accent.