A Voice from the Margins That Shook the Room

In 1851, Sojourner Truth rose to speak at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio. She was a formerly enslaved woman with no formal education, no social standing, no platform of her own. The room was full of educated clergy and politicians. Several men had just argued that women were too delicate and intellectually inferior to deserve equal rights. Truth stood, tall and unshakable, and spoke from the deep well of her experience.…