Birth Name: Isabella Baumfree
Birth Date: 1797
Birth Place Ulster County, New York
Date of Death: November 1883
Place of Death: Battle Creek, Michigan
Truth was on of 13 children born to slave parents, and was sold from her family around the age of eleven. She was sold several times and suffered many hardships under slavery, but her mother endowed her with a deep, unwavering Christian faith that carried her through these trials for her entire life. Her last master, John Dumont, mated Isabella with one of his slaves name Thomas. Thomas and Isabella had five children. She stayed on the Dumont farm until a few months before the state of New York ended slavery in 1828. Dumont had promised Isabella her freedom a year before the state emancipation. When Dumont reneged on his promise, Isabella ran away with her infant son.
Isabella eventually settled in New York City, working as a domestic for several religious communes.
In 1843, Isabella was inspired by a spiritual revelation that would forever change her life. Isabella Baumfree changed her name to Sojourner Truth and walked through Long Island and Connecticut preaching “God’s truth and plan for salvation.” After months of travel, she arrived in Northhampton, MA, and joined the utopian community “The Northhampton Association for Education and Industry,” where she met and worked with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and Olive Gilbert.
Truth eventually added abolitionism and women’s suffrage to her oratory, often giving personal testimony about her experiences as a slave. In 1851, she spoke at a women’s convention in Akron, Ohio, where she gave a speech entitled, “Ain’t I A Woman?” This legendary phrase was forever associated with Truth after that speech.
After the Civil War ended, she worked tirelessly to aid the newly-freed southern slaves, and she even attempted to petition congress to give the ex-slaves land in the “new West.”