Sojourner Truth, activist for abolition, and civil and women's rights

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) was born Isabella Baumfree to enslaved parents James and Elizabeth Baumfree in Esopus, N.Y. When she was 9, Truth (then known as Belle) was sold to a series of buyers in upstate New York.

In 1815, Belle fell in love with Robert, an enslaved man from a neighboring farm, whose owner forbade their relationship since any children resulting from their union would, by law, belong to Belle’s owners. When the couple was discovered together, Robert’s owners savagely beat him and dragged him off; Belle never saw Robert again and subsequently gave birth to their daughter. Belle was later forced to marry an enslaved man named Thomas and together they had four children: Peter, James, Elizabeth and Sophia.

In 1826, Belle, escaped her slave holder with her infant daughter, Sophia. An abolitionist couple, Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen, took mother and daughter in and purchased her services from her slaveholder until New York’s emancipation order took effect. During her stay with the Van Wagenens, Belle became a devout Christian, and, in 1829, she moved to New York City, where she worked for Christian evangelist reformer Elijah Pierson.

In 1844, she joined the Methodist church, changed her name to Sojourner Truth, and began speaking around the country in favor of abolition. The same year, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts, an abolitionist commune established to promote cooperative and productive labor. It was at this organization that she met noted anti-slavery activists William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Ruggles. She would go on to clash with Douglass throughout the years, most notably over the question of whether formerly enslaved men should gain the vote before women.

In 1850, Truth narrated her life story, which was recorded and published by Garrison as The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. With the proceeds of her memoir, she bought her own home in Northampton. In 1851, she began a lecture tour with renowned British abolitionist George Thompson. For the next two years, Truth spoke before hundreds of audiences on abolition and suffrage for women in general, and black women in particular.

In 1856, Truth sold her property in New York and moved to Battle Creek, Michigan to join the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Progressive Friends, Michigan’s emerging abolitionist movement.

During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black soldiers for the Union Army and was employed by the Freedman’s Relief Association to help improve conditions for formerly enslaved people. She also worked at the Freedman’s Hospital in Washington. While working for the hospital, she helped force the desegregation of city streetcars by taking a conductor, who violently forced her off a streetcar, to court. She won her case. In 1864, she met with President Abraham Lincoln in the White House to state her views. After the war, she tried to secure land grants from the federal government for formerly enslaved Americans and continued to lecture widely on women’s rights, prison reform, and capital punishment.