The topic for your Essay #1 submission was to be Sojourner Truth’s speech, ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’
The thesis for your Essay #1 submission was to be in response to the question, “What effect does the repetition of the question, ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’, have on you as a reader.
Not on readers in general, but on you
The three (or more) key points for your Essay #1 submission were to be in support of your thesis statement, which must be in response to the question, “What effect does the repetition of the question, ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’, have on you as a reader. “
For any information that you present, it must be clearly stated how you know this information:
If it is based on your first hand knowledge, then you must inform your reader how you came to have this knowledge – and you must consider whether is truly firsthand knowledge. For example, you can’t simply state that Sojourner Truth gave the speech, ‘Ain’t I a Woman’, at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851. You must precede this information with an introductory attribution and follow it with a parenthetical citation indicating the source from which you obtained this knowledge. A way that this could be done would be by beginning your essay as follows:
In the preface to the inclusion of Sojourner Truth’s speech, ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’, in the anthology, The Presence of Others, co-authored by Andrea Lunsford and John Ruszkiewicz, Lunsford provides a context for this speech by explaining that, “Truth delivered it at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851.” Lunsford further establishes this context by stating that Truth “spoke to an almost all-white audience, since African Americans were, ironically, not welcome at such events”. (Lunsford)
This opening could then be followed by your statement of your essay’s thesis and your provision of the key points, in support of this thesis, on which you will expand in the body of your essay:
Throughout the speech, Truth repeats the rhetorical question, ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ (Truth). In reading the speech, this repetition of these words caused me to keep uppermost in my mind that Truth was a woman, to associate her examples to her as a woman, and to confirm the place of equality in which women deserve to be placed in comparison to men.
Then, in the body paragraphs of my essay, I would expand on each of these key points:
In regard to keeping ‘uppermost I my mind that Truth as a woman’, I might cite source material on the unequal standards to which woman were held (in comparison to men) in 1851.
In regard to associating Truth’s ‘examples to her as a woman’, I might cite portions of Truth’s speech in which she stated events in her life and present source material to show how a man might be judged differently if he had the same experiences, or how a man could not do the same things as a woman (i.e. give birth) and, thereby, imply that women may not only be equal to but better than men.
In regard to ‘the place of equality in which women deserve to be placed in comparison to men’, I might cite source material on how the woman’s suffrage movement spanned from 1830 through 1820 (when women were given the right to vote) and associate how Truth’s speech was a key factor in this movement.
Understand, nothing that you present can be just your opinion. While it is okay to present your opinion, you cannot leave it at that. You must provide your reader with information that supports your opinion – and you must qualify that source by presenting a proper introductory attribution and a parenthetical citation. You cannot just present source material without such qualifications – when you do this you are plagiarizing because you are implying to your reader that this information is something you know without having learned it from a validated source.
In regard to my use of Lunsford’s preface and Truth’s speech from The Presence of Others, here is how these two items would be presented in a Works Cited listing:

Works Cited
Lunsford, Andrea. ‘Preface to Sojourner Truth’s ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’. The Presence of Others. 5th edition. Bedford: St. Martins. Boston. Print. 2008
Truth, Sojourner. ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’. The Presence of Others. 5th edition. Bedford: St. Martins. Boston. Print. 2008

(Note, in neither case are you citing the anthology as a whole (which is why you don’t include Ruszkiewicz as an author). Rather, you are citing specific items that are included in the anthology.)