Sojourner Truth (1797 - 1883)

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree, was an American abolitionist and feminist born into slavery.

Isabella Baumfree was born a slave in Dutch-speaking Ulster County, New York. She was bought and sold four times, subjected to hard physical labor and cruel punishments. As a teenager, she was united with another slave, by whom she had five children. In 1827 - a year before New York's slave emancipation law went into effect - Isabella and her daughter escaped to the nearby Van Wagener abolitionist family. This family bought her freedom for twenty dollars and helped her get her son back.

Isabella moved to New York City in 1828, where she worked for a local minister. By the early 1830s, she was involved in the religious actions sweeping the state and became a charismatic orator. In 1843, she claimed that the Spirit had called her to preach the truth and began calling herself Sojourner Truth. She advocated abolition, temperance, and civil and women's rights.

Being illiterate herself, Sojourner Truth dictated her story to Olive Gilbert, with whom she worked in the abolitionist Northampton Association. As a result, Sojourner Truth's Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern slave freed from bodily slavery by the State of New York in 1828, was published in 1850. 1851 in Akron, Ohio, Truth gave her famous "Am I Not a Woman?" speech. She was a passionate fighter for all aspects of social justice and continued to travel the United States at the risk of her life giving speeches on women's rights, prison reform, and desegregation.