I would like to introduce you to my next woman in history. Her name is Sojourner Truth. Ms. Truth is best known as an advocate as an abolitionist and women's rights. She was an uneducated woman of African descent. The mother of five children from both her husband and her master. Sojourner Truth lived thru horrors you and I would crumble under. But oh what a life she lived!
Ms. Truth was born Isabella "Belle" Baumfree into slavery. She was born in Swartekill, NY. Because slavery was not something that just happened in the southern part of the United States. When Ms. Truth gained her freedom in 1826, she began a petition to also free her son from slavery. In 1828 Sojourner Truth became the first African-American woman to win such a case against a white man.
As the year 1843 came into being, Ms. Isabella Baumfree changed her name to Sojourner Truth. Believing she had been directed by God to leave her city life and begin preaching in the countryside. At the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, OH, Sojourner Truth gave what became her best known speech. It was entitled "Ain't I a Woman?" Although Ms. Truth had been born and raised in the North, the people spreading her speech thought it had more impact if translated into a southern dialect of 1851. From that convention Ms. Sojourner went on to recruit troops for the Union Army. Post-Civil War, she attempted to secure land grants for former slaves. She continued to speak and share her message of truth until 1872.
Although uneducated, Ms. Sojourner Truth was a gifted orator. At her funeral, Frederick Douglas said of Ms. Truth, "Venerable for age, distinguished for insight into human nature, remarkable for independence and courageous self-assertion, devoted to the welfare of her race, she has been for the last forty years an object of respect and admiration to social reformers everywhere."
May that also be said of us! That we are objects of respect and remarkable!
All info gathered from https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth
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