Sojourner Truth

SOJOURNER TRUTH (c.1797-1883)

Abolitionist and women’s rights orator Sojourner Truth is a fascinating fugure because,
in an age when slavery was legal, and most women didn't work outside of the home,
she stood up for herself, took her own name, defined who she was, and lived her own life.
Yet even though she's famous, most people know little about her actual life.

Sojourner Truth was born a slave named Isabella Baumfree in Ulster County, New York. She lived here in the Hardenburg household until about the age of eleven, when she was sold away to a family in New Paltz. Here she lived from 1810 to 1827, during which time she married and had at least five children. Two of her daughters were taken from her and sold. In 1827 she fled the household of her owners and was taken in by Isaac and Maria Van Wagener. Shortly thereafter the state of New York freed all slaves, and Isabella moved to New York City, taking Van Wagoner as her last name.

Always involved in religious activities, she was a regular attendee at the Mother A.M.E. Zion Church, founded in 1796, New York's first African-American church, and one of country's oldest. It is also known as the "Freedom Church" because of its connection to the Underground Railroad, fugitive slaves route to freedom before the Civil War. It was here in 1843 that Isabella stood up one day in the middle of a service and said that henceforth she would be known as Sojourner Truth, “Sojourner because I am a wanderer, Truth because God is truth.”

From then on she traveled extensively across the Northeast and Midwest, speaking on religious faith, which for her also involved speaking against the injustices of slavery and lack of rights for women. Her autobiography The Narrative of Sojourner Truth was published in 1850. She became involved with the Northampton Association in Florence, Massachusetts, a multi-racial utopian community, and lived in Florence (when she wasn’t traveling) until 1856. She dressed plainly, and often traveled humbly and alone, but she became a powerful advocate for both abolition and women’s rights, captivating audiences with her ringing denunciations of slavery. She also spoke for temperance and prison reform.

Sojourner attended the second National Woman Suffrage convention in Akron, Ohio in May of 1851. It was at this convention that she made her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. Responding to the jeers of men arguing that women were too frail to be equal, she responded:

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helped me into carriages, or over puddles, or gave me any best place. And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me. And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well. And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen most of them sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard. And ain't I a woman?"

She was cheered by the crowd at its end. Mrs. Frances Gage, presiding over the convention, said “I have never in my life seen anything like the magical influence that subdued the mobbish spirit of the day and turned the jibes and sneers of an excited crowd into notes of respect and admiration.”

In 1858 she settled in Battle Creek, Michigan, then a powerful center for abolitionist thought and action, and became part of the network which helped slaves on their escape to Canada. She met President Lincoln in Washington, DC in 1864. After the war she was active in efforts to get training and resources for those newly emancipated, although her attempt to have the Federal government set aside western land for freedpeople’s settlement did not succeed. She continued to travel and lecture until a few years before her death, using Battle Creek as her home base. She died here in 1883 at the age of 85, and is buried at Oakhill Cemetery.

The city of Battle Creek honors her with a memorial downtown, and a monument at her
gravesite.

For specific travel information about these sites, check the "Travel Resources" page.