AKRON, Ohio — Hundreds gathered in an Ohio city Wednesday to unveil a plaza and statue dedicated to abolitionist Sojourner Truth, the very spot where the women’s rights pioneer delivered an iconic 1851 speech now known as “Ain’t I a Woman?”
Truth, a former slave, gave the speech to a crowd gathered at the Universalist Old Stone Church in Akron for the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention. In the speech, Truth drew on the hardships she faced while enslaved, asking the audience why her humanity and the humanity of other enslaved African Americans were not seen in the same light as white Americans.
Although the church no longer exists, the Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza and the United Way of Summit and Medina Counties now stand in its place.
Towanda Mullins, president of the Sojourner Truth Project-Akron, said the plaza will honor a piece of the country’s past and help shape its future.
“It will remind others to be the first to speak up, to stand up for everyone, not just some,” she said.
Before Isabella Bomfree adopted the name Sojourner Truth, she was born into slavery in the Hudson Valley in or around 1797. She ran away from her last owner’s home with her daughter in 1826 after he reneged on a promise to free her. She went to work for the Van Wageen family and took their last name.
It is believed that Truth is the first black woman to successfully sue white men to free her son from slavery, although it is possible that there were other cases that investigators were not aware of.
The statue, created by artist and Akron resident Woodrow Nash, shows Truth standing tall, with a book in hand. The monument sits atop an impala lily, Ghana’s national flower, where Truth’s father traced his heritage.
“It was an opportunity to integrate into the monument’s design to elevate the overlooked contributions of Black women civic leaders who have continued in Truth’s footsteps,” said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and senior vice president at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Large stone pillars guard the square with words such as ‘faith’ and ‘activism’ engraved at the top, with a quote from Truth below.
One of Truth’s quotes on a pillar reads: “I will not allow the light of my life to be defined by the darkness around me.”
Dion Harris, the landscape architect who designed the plaza, said he wanted to use natural materials from northeastern Ohio that would have been used to build the former church, including sandstone and natural stone.
“I wanted to show the industrial side of Akron,” Harris said. “I wanted to show her from all sides and capture some of the time of the 1850s when she came.”
Akron’s statue and square are not the only place where Truth is honored. A bronze statue of her and women’s rights pioneers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony was unveiled in New York’s Central Park in 2020, becoming the park’s first monument honoring historical heroines. Another statue of Truth was unveiled in 2021 in Angola, Indiana, at the same place where she gave a speech in June 1861, according to the city’s website.
The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund opened the square. The project was funded by the Knight Foundation, United Way of Summit and Medina, the Sojourner Truth Project-Akron and the Akron Community Foundation, according to a news release.
“This is not an African-American story. This is an American story. History at its best for all people,” Mullins said.
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This story has been corrected to show that Brent Leggs is a senior vice president at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, not the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.