Women You May Not Know

Black and white photo of Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth

ca. 1797 - 1883

Biography

At nine, Sojourner Truth (Isabella “Bell” Baumfree) (ca. 1797-1883) was auctioned off with a flock of sheep for $100. She grew up under the watchful eyes and cruel whips of various “masters”; in 1815 a fellow slave was beaten to death for courting her. Truth eventually married, bore five children, and in 1826, escaped to freedom with her newborn daughter.

When her son, only five, was illegally enslaved, she sued for his recovery and became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man.

In 1829 Truth embraced Christian Evangelism (later Methodism, later Adventism), preaching widely on abolition and women’s rights.

In the early 1850s, her words appeared in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, and she won influential friends like Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony.

During the Civil War, Truth recruited black troops for the Union, meeting President Lincoln; at war’s end, she tried unsuccessfully to secure federal land grants for former slaves.

In 1872, after a meeting with President Grant, Truth attempted to vote, but was barred from the polls.

Once asked if she were a man, the tall, stately Truth showed her breasts, and delivered her famous refrain, “Ain’t I a Woman?” first uttered in 1851.

By Jen Hawkins