The Mount Laurel Library will present “Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman?” on Saturday, Feb. 25, at 2 p.m. The public is invited to this admission-free event. No registration is required.
Daisy Nelson Century, from American History Theatre, tells the story of Isabella Baumfree, who changed her name to Sojourner Truth, in this first-person living history presentation. Truth walked through Long Island and Connecticut, preaching “God’s truth and plan for salvation.” After months of travel, she arrived in Northampton, Mass., and joined “The Northampton Association of Education and Industry,” a utopian community where she met and worked with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass.
Truth’s most quoted speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?” was delivered at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.
Century gives a commanding performance of Truth, bringing to life a woman undeterred by incredible obstacles, a woman who mixed with the leading figures of her day, including Susan B. Anthony, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.
Audience members are urged to consider the twin goals of racial and gender parity of equal importance.
The program is funded by the Horizons Speakers Bureau of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Mount Laurel Library is located at 100 Walt Whitman Ave., Mount Laurel (next to the post office). For additional information about this event, call (856) 234–7319, ext. 333.
