Sojourner Truth, having enslaved parents, was born as a slave. Sojourner, then named Isabella, was separated from her parents right after the death of Charles Hardenbergh, who was their owner. She was often ridiculed and beaten during her time under the ownership of the Neely Family. During her time being a slave, she had gone through three different enslavers and bore five children.
Potrait of Sojourner Truth, Look and Learn, 02/20/25
By the late 1820s, New York developed various acts that would foreshadow the beginning of the Emancipation of all slaves. Sojourner and her youngest daughter ran away from her owner and sought refuge with a Dutch, abolitionist family. With their assistance, Truth launched a lawsuit against her prior owner for selling her kid, making her the first Black woman to sue and the first to win a case against a white man.
In the 1840s, the now equal-rights-fighter Truth joined an abolitionist group where she met notable people like Frederick Douglass. Her powerful speech Ain't I a Woman sparked the ideas of equality for black women. Frances Gage in his account remarked how Truth utilized a rhetorical question to point out discrimination. However, many details in his account proved false and started controversies around her speech and how it happened. Nonetheless, her speech moved audiences, especially the quote which stated "I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?"
During the Civil War, she stood alongside other escapees such as Harriet Tubman to help recruit black soldiers to fight in the War effort, providing soldiers with supplies like food and clothes. Her activism led to Abraham Lincoln inviting her to the White House, where he brought out a bible written by Black people as he recognized her spirituality and faith.
President Abraham Lincoln next to Sojourner Truth, Wikipedia Commons, 02/20/25
After the end of the Civil War, she moved to Michigan, where she continued to fight against discrimination and spoke for women's suffrage. She died in her residence in November 1883 and left a story of fighting for what is moral and right and a legacy of words.
Sojourner Truth memorial statue located in Northampton, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Office Of Travel & Tourism, 02/20/25
