"Well,sur,youisastrangerterme,enIisastrangerteryou,enweisbofestrangersteroneanudder,but'fI'uzinyo'place,Iwouldn'buydisvimya'd.

Yas,suh.Ilivesdesoberyander,behinedenexsan'-hill,ondoLumbertonPlank-road..

 The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,--this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, for merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America; for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro

How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.

Naturally enough the commission of these crimes began to tell upon the public conscience, and the Southern white man, as a tribute to the nineteenth-century civilization, was in a manner compelled to give excuses for his barbarism

. In slave times the Negro was kept subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of the scourging, but, with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into vogue; the Negro was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed.

During the slave regime, the Southern white man owned the Negro body and soul.

        I looked at him in astonishment, and earnestly replied: "No, master, I do not wish to be free in such a manner. If such had been my wish, I should never have troubled you about obtaining your consent to my purchasing myself. I can

Slavery had its dark side as well as its bright side.

one singing of freedom, the other silent and sullen with generations of despair

I told him that I was ready to die, but that he could not conquer me. In struggling with him I bit his finger severely, when he seized a heavy stick and beat me with it in a shameful manner. Again I went home sore and bleeding, but with pride as

        "No matter," he replied, "I am going to whip you, so take down your dress this instant."

  Still, the chief part of the negro music is civilized in its character

singer cannot be reproduced on paper.

        The best that we can do, however, with paper and types, or even with voices, will convey but a faint shadow of the original. The voices of the colored people have a peculiar quality that nothing can imitate; and the intonations and delicate variations of even one

“Jordan roll”?

How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How, in your darkness, did you come to know

O Black and Unknown Bards

Secondly, the mistress, with whom she lived till she was twelve years old, was a kind, considerate friend, who taught her to read and spell.

it would have been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my own history. Neither do I care to excite sympathy for my own sufferings

When I first arrived in Philadelphia, Bishop Paine advised me to publish a sketch of my life, but I told him I was altogether incompetent to such an undertaking.

Don't tell me about religion! What's religion to me? My wife is sold awayfrom me by a man who is one of the leading members of the very church towhich both she and I belong! Put my trust in the Lord! I have done so all mylife nearly, and of what use is it to me? My wife is sold from me just the sameas if I didn't

Fahwell, my chile! fahwell; may God A'mighty be wid you!”

 “Look to de Laud, my chile! Him ony able to bring yeh out mo' nahconkeh!” was the prayerful advice of the woe-stricken old mother. Both,hastening into the kitchen, falling upon their knees, invoked aloud the God ofthe oppressed.

Page 3

The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.

  I WAS born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland.

can't read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have_ learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again.

I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man.

· Ar'n't I a Woman? · Speech to the Women's Rights Convention in Akr~n, Ohio, 185i From The Anti-Slavery Bugle, June 21, 1851 One ~f the most unique and interesting speeches of the Convention was made by Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave.

The sources from which our miseries are derived, and on which I shall comment, I shall not combine in one, but shall put them under distinct heads and expose them in their turn

 HAVING travelled over a considerable portion of these United States, and having, in the course of my travels, taken the most accurate observations of things as they exist--the result of my observations has warranted the full and unshaken conviction, that we, (coloured people of these United States,) are the most degraded, wretched, and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began;

'Twas not long since I left my native shore The land of errors, and Egyptain gloom:

Great God, direct, and guard him from on high, And from his head let ev'ry evil fly! And may each clime with equal gladness see

Does not your soul possess the sacred flame?

Was taken and carried to Canada.

Eunice Allen see the Indians coming,

Before he did the Indians see,

At the close of that year I was sold to a Thomas Stanton, and had to be separated from my wife and one daughter, who was about one month old.

After many proofs of my faithfulness and honesty, my master began to put great confidence in me. My behavior to him had as yet been submissive and obedient. I then began to have hard tasks imposed on me. Some of these were to pound four bushels of ears of corn every night in a barrel for the poultry, or be rigorously punished.

  When we arrived at Narraganset, my master went ashore in order to return a part of the way by land, and gave me the charge of the keys of his trunks on board the vessel, and charged me not to deliver them up to any body, not even to his father without his orders.