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| Sojourner Truth | ||
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The youngest of ten or twelve children, she grew up in a single room in a dark and damp cellar, sleeping on straw on top of loose boards. For sixteen years, from 1810 to 1826, she served as a household slave in New York State, and was sold five times. One owner beat her so savagely that her arms and shoulders bore scars for the rest of her life. She bore a fellow slave five children, only to see at least three of her offspring sold away. In 1826, just a year before slavery was finally abolished in the state, she fled after her owner broke a promise to free her and her husband. She took refuge with a farm family that later bought her freedom. She moved to New York City, carrying only a bag of clothing and 25 cents. There she supported herself as a domestic servant. It was a period of intense religious excitement, and although she lacked formal schooling, Isabella began to preach at camp meetings and on street corners. In the early 1830s, she found herself caught up in one of the major sensations of the day. Briefly she resided with a religious sect led by Robert Matthews, a former carpenter and self-declared savior, who called himself Matthias, the last of the Apostles. Matthias, who had shoulder-length hair and a long beard, denounced alcohol, called ministers devils, demanded that women subordinate themselves to men, and proclaimed that marriage vows were not binding. In the fall of 1834, national attention focused on Matthias; he was arrested, tried, and ultimately acquitted of embezzlement and murder. In succeeding years, Isabella became involved in many of the reform activities of the time, including the movement to curb drinking. For a short time she joined a utopian community in Massachusetts founded by abolitionists. In 1843, she took on the name Sojourner Truth, convinced that God had called on her to wander the country and boldly speak out the truth. Her fame as a preacher, singer, and orator spread quickly and three incidents became the stuff of legend. During the late 1840s, when Frederick Douglass expressed doubt about the possibility of ending slavery peacefully, she replied: "Frederick, is God dead?" In 1851, in a speech before a woman's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, she demanded that Americans recognize that impoverished African American women were women too, reportedly saying: "I could work as much and east as much as a man-when I could get it-and bear de lash as well! And a'n't I a woman?" In 1858, when a hostile audience insisted that the six-foot-tall orator spoke too powerfully to be a woman, she reportedly bared her breasts before them. During the Civil War she took an active role promoting the Union cause, collecting food and supplies for black troops and struggling to make emancipation a war aim. When the war was over, she traveled across the North, collecting signatures on petitions calling on Congress to set aside western land for former slaves. At her death in 1883, she was rightly remembered as one of the nation;s most eloquent opponents of discrimination.
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Abolitionists
She
was known as Isabella when she was born into slavery around 1797
in New York's Hudson River Valley. A decade and a half later,
she adopted a new name. As Sojourner Truth she became a legend
in the struggle to abolish slavery and extend equal rights to
women.