Sojourner Truth's voice is one which shaped the thinking of progressive people in the nineteenth century.

Sojourner Truth was born a slave in the state of New York in 1797. Her given name was Isabella. She lived with her parents as a young child, but their original slave owner died when she was three and the family was inherited by his son. The son, Charles Hardenbergh, kept his slaves in deplorable conditions; twelve of them lived in his cellar where it was dark and cold in the winter and hot and unventilated in the summer. Hardenbergh did not separate the family, but when he died in Isabella's eleventh year, she and one of her brothers were sold away from their parents and siblings. The new owners frequently beat her, as her command of English was limited since she had been raised as the slave of a Dutch family. Isabella's father was set free in his old age and convinced another family to buy her. This family did not subject her to physical abuse, but after a couple of years she was sold again, and this happened to her two more times before she was purchased by John Dumont, another farmer. Isabella grew into a tall (about six feet tall) and physically strong woman. Dumont liked to boast about how much work she was able to do: she performed the duties of cleaning woman, milkmaid, cook, weaver, wet nurse and field hand. Dumont chose her a husband, Tom, because he wanted her to have children so he would have more slaves. Isabella and Tom had five children together in the next ten years.

Unlike the practice in Southern states, in New York the slavery laws dictated that after a certain number of years a slave was to be set free. Two years before Isabella was legally entitled to be set free, Dumont approached her with an offer that if she were to take on extra duties and work even harder, he would set her free a year early. She agreed, working day and night to comply. When the year was up, Dumont reneged. Isabella was very angry, and she sought an answer in prayer. She said that God told her to wake up a couple of hours before dawn and take her baby daughter and leave. She did just that, finding refuge with a Quaker family nearby. (Quakers were mostly abolitionists who did not believe in slavery.) This family, the Von Wagenens, paid Dumont for the rest of her time in slavery and she lived voluntarily with them, changing her name to Isabella Von Wagenen to disassociate herself from the slave owners.

Isabella Von Wagenen became deeply religious and one day when she was in her forties she said she received a message from God saying that she should travel around and preach. She changed her name to Sojourner Truth (because her mission was to sojourn in the land and speak the truth of God's word). In 1846 she left New York to do this.

Despite the fact that Truth could neither read nor write, she was a compelling speaker. She had a commanding presence because of her height, and her demeanor was such that people tended to get very quiet and pay attention when she spoke with honesty, sense, and dignity about her own experiences and her opinions on the controversial issues of the day, slavery and women's rights. Her Christian values formed the basis for her pacifist approach, but she was determined and unstoppable when she wanted to be heard. In 1850 abolitionists published her account of her life in slavery, called Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. She sold many copies as she travelled around speaking in Ohio and Indiana. Abolitionists invited her to speak at meetings and conventions, and so did women's rights advocates. In 1851, Truth attended the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. A group of ministers was present, opposing suffrage or any change in the legal rights women possessed. They tried to apply the Bible to bolster their arguments. Sojourner Truth was bothered by what they were saying, and she got to her feet and began to walk to the front of the room to respond. Some attendees tried to get Frances Gage, the meeting's organizer, not to let Truth speak because they did not want to appear to be mixed up with abolitionism. Gage was happy to let Truth respond, though, and Truth made what was to become her most famous speech: "Ain't I a Woman?" Please read it by clicking here.

In her many years as a well-regarded speaker, Sojourner Truth met with two presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, she also once met Harriet Tubman, and associated with prominent figures such as abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe. During the Civil War, she helped recruit African Americans to join the Union Army, and she worked as a counselor to freed slaves. During the Civil War, an incident occurred during which a streetcar conductor sprained her shoulder trying to push her off the streetcar. She had a witness, a White woman friend who was trying to get on the street car with her. She ended up filing assault charges against the conductor who had injured her, and won a victory in court. These highly publicized proceedings resulted in desegregation of the Washington, D.C. streetcars.

Truth contended courageously with widespread racial intolerance and hatred. She was threatened frequently and on one occasion she was seriously injured by a mob; she walked with a cane the rest of her life.

After the Civil War, Truth's number one priority was working to encourage the government to make land available so that displaced former slaves could subsist economically as farmers. Sojourner Truth died in 1883 after a lifetime of working to serve God and her fellow man. []

Susan Robinson