Sojourner Truth Biography

In the 18th Century, the American Colonies had won political independence from an oppressive colonial power and founded an ambitious new republic committed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Paradoxically, however, the nascent nation remained economically tethered to a practice at odds with its own creed.

Slavery had been deeply intertwined with the settling of the continent and indeed the American experiment. Since the beginning of the 16th Century, the transatlantic slave trade had brought enslaved Africans to European colonies in North America, the Caribbean, and South America. 

Most slave owners rationalized the practice as not only acceptable but as natural and righteous. The institution of slavery did, after all, have a long history of being sanctioned by church and state. Moreover, slavery had been the norm in America for so long, even many slaves, especially those born into bondage, had come to accept their chattel status as culturally normal. This was the case with a slave named Isabella Baumfree. 

Isabella was born into slavery (circa 1797) in Ulster County, New York. She was the youngest of many siblings. She was, however, never certain as to the number of brothers and sisters she had as some were sold before she was born. She was sold three times prior to becoming a teenager, once with a flock of sheep for $100.

Sojourner Truth as a young slave sculpted by Trian Greene, Esopus, NY

Isabella married a fellow slave named Thomas and the couple had five children. As a young mother, Isabella was so deluded into believing slavery was honorable that she felt pride in increasing the property of her master through her offspring. Over time, those delusions began to dissolve. One event changed her mind definitively. The state of New York passed a law emancipating all slaves on July 4, 1827. In advance of that date, Isabella’s slave master promised to free her in late 1826 but failed to honor his word. Isabella, feeling disrespected, took matters into her own hands and simply walked away with her infant daughter.

Isabella was so deluded into believing slavery was honorable that she felt pride in increasing the property of her master through her offspring.

Shortly after her walk to freedom, Isabella discovered that her five-year-old son, who was still a slave, had been illegally sold across state lines. With the assistance of Quaker friends, she took the issue to court and won the case, thus becoming the first black woman to take a white man to court and win. 

It was at this stage Isabella had a powerful mystical experience and became a devout Christian. In 1829, she moved to New York City and joined the Methodist Church. She stayed in the city for fourteen years before realizing city life was eating her up. She concluded, “The rich rob the poor, and the poor rob one another.” She had traded a life of slavery for one of competitive greed that seemed to have little room for maxims like “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

She left New York on June 1, 1843. Feeling called to go east, she declared famously, “The Spirit calls me there, and I must go.” She decided she would begin “testifying of the hope that was in her” at which point she changed her name to her now-famous moniker. Sojourner Truth became a traveling preacher. She spoke of her experiences as a slave and supported abolitionist and women’s rights movements. To put her efforts into historical context Truth was beginning her campaign a decade after William Wilberforce and other British abolitionists had succeeded in abolishing slavery across the entire British Empire.

Truth resided briefly in Northampton, Massachusetts during which she made the acquaintance of Henry David Thoreau at a Fourth of July rally sponsored by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1854. Both of them addressed the crowd along with noted abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Although there is no record of Truth ever crossing paths with Thoreau’s mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, there are uniquely congruent aspects to these personalities who hailed from strikingly opposite happenstances. Emerson was a white, privileged, educated man who began his career in the ministry, which he left to lecture to secular audiences. Truth was an enslaved, unlettered, religiously inspired woman who lectured to public crowds. Emerson sounded the clarion call for Americans to discover self-reliance and personal genius. Truth, about six years Emerson’s senior, was the rich embodiment of both.

In September 1857, Truth moved to Battle Creek, Michigan. She was attracted by a nucleus of abolitionists in the area called the Progressive Friends. She continued to travel and lecture but refused money for her lectures. Instead, the proceeds from her memoirs, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, and a postcard of herself sold at lectures covered her modest living expenses. 

Illiterate her entire life, Truth was nevertheless a charismatic stage presence and powerful speaker. At almost six feet tall, Truth’s majestic stature and confident body language commanded attention. Her deep, sonorous voice could move the most recalcitrant, and her humor could disarm the most hostile. Always unpredictable, she was also prone to suddenly breaking into song. She once pacified a violent crowd simply by singing. Her rousing “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, delivered extemporaneously at a women’s convention in Ohio in 1851, is legendary for its oratory.

During the Civil War, she recruited black soldiers for the Union Army. After the war, she continued the fight for equal rights, women’s rights and suffrage, temperance, prison reform, and the termination of capital punishment.

Truth died at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan on November 26, 1883. She is quoted as saying, “I am not going to die. I am going home like a shooting star.”