Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist, women’s rights activist, emancipated slave and itinerant evangelist, became arguably the most well known 19th Century African American woman. Born Isabella Baumfree around 1791, from a young age, this enslaved girl was bought and sold several times by slaveowners in New York. She married an enslaved man named Thomas, and together they had five children. On July 4, 1827, the New York State Legislature emancipated her, and she moved with her son to New York City, where she worked as a live-in domestic. She became involved in a religious cult known as the Kingdom, whose leader, Matthias, beat her and assigned her the heaviest workload.

The turning point in Truth’s life came on June 1, 1843, when she adopted a new name, Sojourner, and headed east for the purpose of “exhorting the people to embrace Jesus, and refrain from sin.” For several years, she preached at camp meetings and lived in a utopian community. She also toured the public speaking circuit on behalf of abolition and women’s rights, and in 1851, she gave her infamous “Ain’t I A Woman” speech at a Women’s Rights Convention. The plight of freed slaves then caught her attention, and she championed the idea of a colony for freed slaves in the West, where they would have a chance to become self-supporting and self-reliant. She lived her later years in a Spiritualist community in Harmonia, Michigan.

Sources:
Olive Gilbert and Frances Titus, Narrative of Sojourner Truth; A Bondswoman of Olden Time, Emancipated by the New York Legislature in the Early Part of the Present Century; with a History of her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from her “Book of Life” (1875); Carleton Mabee, Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend (1993); Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (1996), Priscilla Pope-Levison, Turn the Pulpit Loose: Two Centuries of American Women Evangelists (2004).

Contributor(s):
Pope-Levison, Priscilla
Seattle Pacific University

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