Truth, Sojourner c. 1797–1883

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sojourner Truth was born a slave in Ulster County, New York. Her masters at birth were the Hardenburgh family, descendents of Dutch “patroon” planters, and she was named Isabella Baumfree at birth. During her lifetime she was sold several times, married Thomas Dumont, another slave, and had at least four children with him. In 1827 New York freed all remaining slaves, but Isabella had already left her owners. After the abolition of slavery, she successfully sued her former owners to obtain the freedom of one of her children, whom they had transferred to Alabama.

The 1830s were a time of great religious ferment, called the Second Great Awakening. Isabella was caught up in the movement, and she traveled around the northeast and settled in several religious communes. It was about this time that she began calling herself Sojourner Truth and became an itinerant preacher.

In the 1840s she became active in the abolitionist movement, and she worked with many abolitionist leaders such as Frederick Douglass (1817–1895) and William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879). She was in great demand as a speaker, and her memoir The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave, was dictated to and edited by abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896).

Sojourner Truth also became involved in women’s rights issues. Like many abolitionists, she saw a connection between the issues of women’s liberation and freedom for blacks. Her most famous speech, “Ain’t I A Woman?,” was delivered at a women’s rights conference in 1851. The speech was transcribed by another woman abolitionist, Frances Gage, who published it almost thirty years later. Gage’s text is the only record of Sojourner Truth’s oratorical style, and it is written in nonstandard English. It is unclear if that is really the way Sojourner Truth spoke. Contemporaries, both black and white, always described her as a riveting speaker, and nobody ever suggested that her English was poor or difficult to understand. Nonetheless, the speech as transcribed shows some of the power of Sojourner Truth’s oratory: the biblical or theological arguments mixed with homely, rural simile, the chatty tone, the repetition of “and ain’t I a woman?” and other rhetorical elements that have made this speech a classic of early feminism.

When the Civil War (1861–1865) broke out, Sojourner Truth worked for better conditions for blacks in the Union military and against segregation in northern cities. After the war she called for the establishment of a “Negro state” in the west. She also supported the Freedman’s Bureau and tried to help black war refugees and the newly freed people in the South find jobs and housing. She continued to work for women’s rights, civil rights for blacks, and temperance (laws restricting alcohol consumption) until her death in 1883.

Sojourner Truth is important because she helped set the terms of reference for the debate over slavery, civil rights for blacks after the Civil War, and women’s rights in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. She is probably as important a figure as any of the other well-known abolitionists—Douglass, Garrison, Beecher Stowe—especially because as a black woman she has inherent credibility on both black and women’s issues. She is also important as an example of a little-appreciated phenomenon, the link between Protestant evangelical Christianity, abolitionism, and women’s liberation. It is important to realize that in the middle of the 1800s, evangelical Christians were more likely to be radicals than conservatives. Finally, she deserves attention because of her lively speaking style. There is a reason that she stood out as a speaker and sold many books in that era, so well provided with great speakers and writers.

SEE ALSO Civil Rights; Feminism; Fundamentalism; Fundamentalism, Christian; Slavery; Social Movements; Suffrage Movement, Women’s; U.S. Civil War

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Painter, Nell Irvin. 1996. Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol. New York: W. W. Norton.

Truth, Sojourner. 1998. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. New York: Penguin Classics.

Stewart R. King

TRUTH, SOJOURNER

Sojourner Truth was a nineteenth-century African American evangelist who embraced abolitionism and women's rights. A charismatic speaker, she became one of the best-known abolitionists of her day.

Born a slave around 1797 in Ulster County, New York, Isabella Baumfree, as she was originally named, lived with several masters. She bore at least five children to a fellow slave named Thomas and took the name of her last master, Isaac Van Wagener, in 1827. She was freed in 1828 when a New York law abolished slavery within the state, and with the help of Quaker friends, she recovered a young son who had been illegally sold into slavery in the South.

In 1829 she moved to New York City and worked as a domestic servant. Since childhood she had experienced visions and heard voices, which she attributed to God. Her mystic bent led her to become associated with Elijah Person, a New York religious missionary. She worked and preached with Person in the streets of the city, and in 1843 she had a religious experience in which she believed that God commanded her to travel beyond New York to spread the Christian gospel. She took the name Sojourner Truth and traveled throughout the eastern states as an evangelist.

Truth soon became acquainted with the abolitionist movement and its leaders. She adopted their message, speaking out against slavery. Her speaking tours expanded as abolitionists realized her effectiveness as a lecturer. In 1850 she toured the Midwest and drew large, enthusiastic crowds. Because she was illiterate, she dictated her life story, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, and sold the book at her lectures as a means of supporting herself.

In the early 1850s, she met leaders of the emerging women's rights movement, most notably Lucretia Mott. Truth recognized the connection between the inferior legal status of African Americans and women in general. Soon she was speaking before women's rights groups, advocating the right to vote. Her most famous speech was entitled Ain't I a Woman?

During the 1850s, Truth settled in Battle Creek, Michigan, but went to Washington, D.C., in 1864 to meet with President abraham

lincoln. She remained in Washington to help the war effort, collecting supplies for black volunteer regiments serving in the Union army and helping escaped slaves find jobs and homes.

After the war she joined the National Freed-men's Relief Association, working with former slaves to prepare them for a different type of life. Truth believed that former slaves should be given free land in the West, but her "Negro State" proposal failed to interest Congress. Nevertheless, during the 1870s she encouraged African Americans to resettle in Kansas and Missouri.

"There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about colored women; if colored men get their rights and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as hard as it was before."
—Sojourner Truth

Truth remained on the public speaking circuit until 1875, when she retired to Battle Creek. She died there on November 26, 1883.

further readings

Davis, Peggy Cooper. 1996. "'So Tall Within'—The Legacy of Sojourner Truth." Cardozo Law Review 18 (November).

Painter, Nell Irvin, ed. 1998. Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondswoman of Olden Time, with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her Book of Life. New York: Penguin Books.

Whalin, W. Terry. 1997. Sojourner Truth: American Abolitionist. Uhrichsville, Ohio: Barbour & Co.

cross-references

Abolition; "Ain't I a Woman?" (Appendix, Primary Document).

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797-1883) was a black American freedom fighter and orator. She believed herself chosen by God to preach His word and to help with the abolitionist effort to free her people.

Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree in Ulster County, N.Y., the daughter of an African named Baumfree (after his Dutch owner) and a woman called Elizabeth. About the age of 9 she was auctioned off to an Englishman named John Nealy. The Nealys understood very little of her Dutch jargon and, as a result, she was often brutally punished for no real reason.

Eventually Nealy sold her to a fisherman who owned a tavern in Kingston, N.Y. Here she acquired the idiomatic expressions which came to mark her speech. John J. Dumont, a nearby plantation owner, purchased her next. During her tenure with his family she married and had five children. In 1827, after New York had passed an emancipation act freeing its slaves, she prepared to take her family away. But Dumont began to show reluctance to this, so she ran away with only her youngest child.

She finally wound up in New York City. She worked at a menial job and through some friends came under the sway of a religious fanatic named Mathias. Eventually disillusioned by her life in New York and by Mathias, in 1843 she left on what she termed a pilgrimage to spread the truth of God's word. She assumed the name Sojourner Truth, which she believed God had given her as a symbolic representation of her mission in life. Soon her reputation as an orator spread, and large crowds greeted her wherever she spoke.

A controversial figure for most of the rest of her life, Truth engaged the courts in two rather unusual cases, winning them both and establishing precedents. Thus, she became the first black to win a slander suit against prominent whites, and the first black woman to test the legality of segregation of Washington, D.C., streetcars.

During the Civil War, Truth bought gifts for the soldiers with money raised from her lectures and helped fugitive slaves find work and housing. After the war she continued her tirade for the Lord and against racial injustice, even when old age and ill health restricted her activities to the confines of a Battle Creek, Mich., sanatorium. She died there on Nov. 26, 1883.

Further Reading

Sojourner Truth's speech at the Women's Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio, on May 29, 1851, is in The Faith of Our Fathers, edited by Irving Mark and Eugene L. Schwaab. Works on Sojourner Truth include Olive Gilbert, Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1878; repr. 1968); Arthur Huff Fauset, Sojourner Truth: God's Faithful Pilgrim (1938), especially good for insights into the religious implications of her life; Hertha E. Pauli, Her Name Was Sojourner Truth (1962); and Jacqueline Bernard, Journey toward Freedom: The Story of Sojourner Truth (1967). Lerone Bennett, Jr., Pioneers in Protest (1968), devotes a chapter to her. A brief biography is in Wilhelmena S. Robinson, Historical Negro Biographies (1968). □

Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797–1883), abolitionist, feminist, and Pentecostal preacher.Sojourner Truth was born a slave named Isabella in Ulster County in New York's Hudson River valley. During her enslavement, Isabella married and bore five children. Emancipated by a New York State law passed in 1828, she embraced a “perfectionist” (Pentecostal) Methodism. She also sued successfully for the return of Peter, her young son, who had been illegally sold into slavery in Alabama.

Moving with Peter to New York City in 1828, Isabella joined the utopian religious community “Kingdom of the Prophet Matthias (Robert Matthews)” for a time in the early 1830s. On 1 June 1843, Pentecost Sunday, at the height of the Millerite adventist movement, wherein William Miller had predicted Christ's second coming in 1843–1844, the voice of the Holy Spirit told her she was Sojourner Truth, itinerant preacher. That winter, Truth settled in an industrial commune, the Northampton Association in Massachusetts. There she imbibed feminism and abolitionism, met William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, and dictated the Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Between 1850 and 1864, Truth frequently participated in feminist and antislavery meetings. She spoke at an Akron, Ohio, women's rights meeting in 1851 but—contrary to later accounts—did not ask, “Ar'n’t I a woman?”

Truth saw the Civil War as a kind of Armageddon struggle remaking American society. She embraced political action (which, as a Garrisonian, she had earlier repudiated), and in 1864 campaigned for Abraham Lincoln's reelection. After the war she championed woman suffrage. Truth died in Battle Creek, Michigan, where she lived with her two surviving daughters.
See also African American Religion; African Americans; Antebellum Era; Millennialism and Apocalypticism; Pentecostalism; Utopian and Communitarian Movements; Woman Suffrage Movement; Women's Rights Movements.

Bibliography

Nell Irvin Painter , Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol, 1996.
Nell Irvin Painter, ed., Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 1998.

Nell Irvin Painter

Truth, Sojourner [Isabella Van Wagener] (c.1797–1883), orator, advocate for women's rights. A New York‐born former slave who spoke Dutch first, then learned English, she grew up on a Dutch estate in Ulster County and was sold several times, sometimes to English‐speakers who beat her for being slow in the language. She had two of her children sold away from her and when she was 30 she bolted from a hard master, and following her own revelations from God, renamed herself and embarked on her mission, as commanded, to “sojourn” in the land and spread His truth. In Northampton, Mass., she came under the influence of abolitionists and sharpened her message. She chose a white amanuensis to write her narrative—it is unclear whether she was illiterate—but her own voice comes through in Narrative of Sojourner Truth; A Bondswoman of Olden Time, with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her “Book of Life.” It appeared in the Anti‐Slavery Bugle issue of June 1851 and features her “three hearts”—millennialism, abolitionism, and women's rights. Sojourner's attestation of God giving her Truth for her name appeared in Harriet Beecher Stowe's piece The Libyan Sibyl.

Sojourner Truth c.1797–1883, American abolitionist, a freed slave, originally called Isabella, b. Ulster co., N.Y. Convinced that she heard heavenly voices, she left (1843) domestic employment in New York City, adopted the name Sojourner Truth, and traveled throughout the North preaching emancipation and women's rights. A remarkable personality, she spoke with much effectiveness even though she remained illiterate.

Bibliography: See O. Gilbert, Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1878, repr. 1968); biographies by A. H. Fauset (1938, repr. 1971), H. E. Pauli (1962), E. B. Claflin (1987), and N. Painter (1996).

Sojourner Truth see Truth, Sojourner .

Truth, Sojourner. See Sojourner Truth.