During the civil war and reconstruction eras, America’s main concern was giving rights to people of color. In the chaos the country forgot that women need rights too. In today’s society, women and people of color have the same rights as white men, but unfortunately there is still an issue of equality and justice. In theory we are all the same, but in practice, white men still have all the power. This is why literature concerning these issues is as relevant today as it was in the mid-1800s. The speeches “Ain’t I a Woman?”, “What Time of Night It Is”, and “Keeping the Thing Going while Things Are Stirring” by Sojourner Truth and the autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs discuss the critical combination of racial and gender equality. Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs are former slaves and are credible, trustworthy speakers on the topics of race and gender, but because of their different experiences, they tackle the issues from different angles. Jacobs seems to speak on racial and slave issues from a woman’s perspective, whereas Truth speaks on women’s issues from the
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Both agree than black men had a rough go of it in the slave days, but that was nothing compared to being a black slave woman. Harriet Jacobs makes the point that “slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women” (p. 618). The enslaved men are treated like animals, whipped, beaten, and starved until they keel over and die, but female slaves, especially the unfortunately beautiful ones, “have wrongs, sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own” on top of the horrors all other slaves experience (p. 618). From the time the girls reach puberty, they are continually harassed until they are reduced to living sex dolls. Black men went through a lot, but they never had to endure such heinous
Both agree than black men had a rough go of it in the slave days, but that was nothing compared to being a black slave woman. Harriet Jacobs makes the point that “slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women” (p. 618). The enslaved men are treated like animals, whipped, beaten, and starved until they keel over and die, but female slaves, especially the unfortunately beautiful ones, “have wrongs, sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own” on top of the horrors all other slaves experience (p. 618). From the time the girls reach puberty, they are continually harassed until they are reduced to living sex dolls. Black men went through a lot, but they never had to endure such heinous