10 questions · Society & Everyday
She was not from the South, and English was not her first language. Isabella Baumfree was born around 1797 in New York State, in a district where Dutch settlers set the tone: Dutch was her mother tongue, and she kept the accent all her life. That there was slavery north of the Mason-Dixon line is easily forgotten. New York did not finally abolish it until 1827. A year before that deadline she walked away, carrying her youngest daughter; she had to leave the other children behind, because by law they still owed years of service. When she learned that her five-year-old son Peter had been illegally sold to Alabama, she did something no Black woman had done before her: she went to court. In 1828 she won the case and got her son back: the first time a Black woman in the United States sued a white man and won. In 1843, by her own account, she heard a voice telling her to travel the country and preach. She put down her name and called herself Sojourner Truth: a traveller, and the truth. She could neither read nor write, but she could hold entire chapters of the Bible in her head and had a presence that practised speakers could not match. In 1851 she spoke at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, and told the room that all this talk of feminine delicacy had never once been applied to her; she had ploughed, harvested and lost thirteen children. She dictated her life story and supported herself by selling it, along with photographs of herself that she had printed in series. Under each picture she put the line that she was selling the shadow to support the substance. During the Civil War she gathered supplies for Black regiments and was received by President Lincoln. In Washington she rode segregated streetcars pointedly and repeatedly until the segregation there fell: more than a century before Rosa Parks.
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Isabella Baumfree
She gave the name up in 1843, when she decided to travel the country as a preacher.
💡 Did you know? „Sojourner“ means traveller and „Truth“ speaks for itself: she meant to wander and tell people the truth.
Dutch
She grew up in a Dutch-speaking district of New York State.
💡 Did you know? She kept the accent all her life: which makes the famous version of her speech, written in a Southern dialect, all the more suspect.
New York
New York did not finally abolish slavery until 1827.
💡 Did you know? That the Northern states had slavery too is usually overlooked: her life undoes the tidy split between a free North and an enslaved South.
Her son
He had been illegally sold to Alabama; she sued and got him back.
💡 Did you know? It was the first time a Black woman in the United States sued a white man and won: in 1828, a generation before the Civil War.
„Ain't I a Woman?“
She was speaking to a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio.
💡 Did you know? The famous version dates from 1863 and was written down in a Southern dialect Truth never spoke: the editor evidently found it more effective.
Read and write
She dictated her life story to a friend who wrote it down.
💡 Did you know? She could still recite whole chapters of the Bible, and preferred children to read passages to her: adults, she said, always started explaining.
Photographs of herself
She had portrait cards printed in series and sold them after her appearances.
💡 Did you know? On every card she had printed: „I sell the shadow to support the substance.“
Segregated streetcars
She boarded them pointedly again and again, let herself be thrown off, and sued a conductor who had injured her.
💡 Did you know? She won, and Washington's streetcars ran integrated from then on. That was 1865, ninety years before Montgomery.
Foto: Randall Studio · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Sojourner Truth
1797
Born: around 1797 in Swartekill, New York
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