No one recorded exactly what Sojourner Truth said to the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, on this date in 1851. The speech was memorable, even if it was mis-remembered. It is known as the “Ain’t I a Woman” speech, though a newspaper report from a month after, written by a journalist who was present, does not include that phrase.

Years later, a version appeared that captured Truth’s words but in a “plain-spoken” Southern dialect, which, many historians point out would not have been Truth’s accent: she was from upstate New York and Dutch was her first language.
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I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.—Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (1961)

Walker Percy was born 100 years ago today.

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The Sierra Club was founded on this date in 1892 by John Muir and friends.
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Herman Wouk’s first novel was published in 1941. His last was published in 2012. His most recent book, a memoir, was published in January of this year. Herman Wouk is 101 today.
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