“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.”
- Sojourner Truth -
Isabella Baumfree was born in Ulster County, New York, in 1797 and was the youngest of twelve children. She only spoke Dutch like many Black New Yorkers at the time, and due to the difference in language between Isabella and her masters, she was often beaten for not understanding them. When Isabella was sold to the Dumont farm, for instance, she was abused by both John and Sally Dumont, with John beating her and Sally sexually abusing her.
While living through the abuse and attempting to protect the five children she had with another slave during this time, Isabella found healing through her faith in God, and following an African tradition, she took to the woods to build a temple made of brush where she could worship. In 1827, she heard the voice of God, who told her to escape the grasps of her owners. (a)
With her infant Sophia, she escaped the Dumont farm to live with an abolitionist Methodist family called the Van Wagenens. (b) While living with the Van Wagenens and feeling “so tall within, as if the power of a nation was within”, Isabella raised the money needed for legal fees, filed a complaint with the Ulster County grand jury, and was able to have her five-year-old son, Peter, released from slavery. Isabella accomplished this through her faith, and it was one of the earliest instances of her faith inspiring her activism. (a)
By 1828, Isabella lived in New York City working for a local minister and had become an inspiring religious speaker by taking part in revivals. Her new passion led her to change her name to Sojourner Truth, (Sojourner pronounced sow·jr·nr) as she declared herself called upon by the Holy Spirit to preach the truth.
Sojourner Truth continued preaching, soon becoming associated with names like Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. With them, she became a speaker for human rights, forever giving her a very influential spot in abolitionist history. Truth also began speaking out for women’s rights in her most powerful speech titled “Ain’t I a Woman?” (1) (2) given in Akron, Ohio, at a women’s rights conference. Truth would even meet with women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, two of the most influential names in the women’s rights and suffrage movements. (b)
Truth continued to advocate for human rights through her words and actions. After writing her first book, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, which recounted her time as a slave, she traveled as a lecturer thanks to her book’s success. Her speeches and lectures played a different tune than those of Frederick Douglass’s as she based her words on biblical teachings.
Once the Civil War began, she became involved by organizing supplies for Black troops and urging young men to join the Union army. Because of her heroic actions and contributions, Truth was even invited to the White House to meet Abraham Lincoln for her service and advocacy. (c)
During the Exodus of 1879, the first mass migration of now freed African Americans away from the South after the Civil War, Truth continued her work by traveling to the nation’s capital to help the newly released people find homes in western lands. She created a petition to help freed slaves find land, but many historians think that her petition never reached Congress, and, if it did, it was never given a second glance. (a)
Still, Nell Painter, a Harvard graduate and notable historian, would later go on to write about Truth: “The force that brought her from the soul murder of slavery into the authority of public advocacy was the power of the Holy Spirit...[which] gave her a resource claimed by millions of black women and by disempowered people the world over...it was Truth’s religious faith that transformed her from Isabella, domestic servant, into Sojourner Truth, a hero for three centuries at least.” (d)
Nearly blind and deaf after years of fighting for human rights, Truth lived out the rest of her life in Michigan. The movement she aided and the truths she spoke continue to be seen and heard across the land, proving Painter’s description of her as “a hero” to be the most accurate of truths. (c)
Reflection
A word from Vinny Demme
I grew up in a very religious area in America, and I knew many people who went to church twice a week and lived their lives by the word of God. On the other hand, I have never set foot in a church for a church service, only for piano recitals and weddings. My parents never made me go, and I never really felt the need to go when most of the people I saw go to church held anti-gay beliefs and used discriminatory rhetoric.
Now, I have no real knowledge of what goes on in a church, but I’ve always noticed a difference in those that use God’s words and teachings to bring positive change to this world rather than a sense of superiority that brings out hateful and discriminatory rhetoric. Sojourner Truth is a prime example of that.
It’s a bit crazy to think that when it came to speaking against slavery and racial injustice, Sojourner Truth was nowhere near alone at the time. The truth is that many people were doing the same thing, and while slavery does not exist in America anymore and public spaces are no longer segregated, people continue to do the same thing to fight enduring racial injustice.
2020 is not anywhere near the first or last time people have flooded the streets protesting racial injustice in recent times. It seems like it happens all the time. For so long, America has seen pieces of legislation being pushed forward to help bring an end to racial injustice just to have them defeated. Perhaps one contributing factor to this is how much we are willing to teach students. I don’t recall learning much about Sojourner Truth in school.
Maybe if her story was told in religious areas like the one I grew up in--where religion seems to be a gateway for discriminatory practices--her story might have inspired people to use the word of God to empower those who had been oppressed for centuries as Truth did through her words and actions.
Footnotes
Press that link!! It brings you to a very good reading of Truth's speech by Kerry Washington... Washington plays Truth perfectly - so sassy, so over everything.
This speech can be considered Truth's Gettsyburg Address. Saying so much while not saying a whole lot.
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