After the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, many waves followed, each one growing more diverse—economically and racially. In 1851, a woman named Sojourner Truth got up onstage and gave her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech. Although later accounts would present it in Southern slave dialect, Truth—a native of New York—spoke in perfect English. “I am a woman’s rights,” she said with complete confidence. “I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?”
