Sojourner Truth

(1797-1883)

Sojourner Truth was a charismatic orator and activist who devoted much of her life to fighting for the rights of African Americans and women. The fourteen years she spent in Florence, Massachusetts were critical to Truth’s development into a nationally known lecturer first for the antislavery cause, then after the Civil War for freedmen’s and women’s rights, among other causes. Her lecturing career afforded the former enslaved woman to support herself, her children and grandchildren while fighting for what she believed.

Early Years: Enslavement (1797-1826)

Sojourner Truth was born into slavery on 1797 as Isabella Baumfree. Her first years were spent on a farm belonging to a Dutch-speaking family in Ulster County, New York. The daughter of Elizabeth and James, she was the youngest of 10 or 12 children, many of whom were sold before she knew them.

First separated from her family at age 9, Truth was sold several times before ending up in 1810 on the farm of John DuMont in West Park, New York. As was the case for most slaves in rural areas in the North, Truth lived isolated from other African Americans and suffered from abuse at the hands of her “owners.” She also never learned to read or write.

Between 1815 and 1826, Sojourner bore five children: Diana, Peter, Elizabeth, Sophia, and another baby who later died. Her children were central to her and Truth lived near her children and grandchildren much of her life.

Freedom (1826)

In 1826, after Dumont reneged on a promise to free her, 29 year-old Sojourner Truth walked off the farm with her infant baby, Sophia, and “took her freedom.” Truth found refuge with neighboring abolitionists, the Van Wagenens, where she remained until 1827, when all New York slaves of her age were emancipated. Around that time, Truth experienced a religious awakening and became a devout Methodist. She would draw forth on her faith to support her activism for the rest of her life.

Shortly after her escape, Truth learned that her five-year-old, still enslaved, son Peter had been illegally sold by the Dumont family to a relative in Alabama.

He was but one of perhaps thousands of illegally kidnapped and sold New York African Americans, most whom never found their way back home from a life of slavery in the South.

Strengthened by her faith and determination, and armed with help from white friends, Truth took the issue to court and won, securing Peter’s emancipation and return from the South. The case was one of the first in which a black woman successfully challenged a white man in a United States court. It also demonstrated Truth’s faith and determination to fight for what she believed, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

New York and the Advent of Sojourner Truth, Preacher (1829-1843)

In 1829, Sojourner Truth moved to New York City where she worked as a domestic and joined a millennial religious community, The Kingdom. When the community disbanded in scandal in 1835, she was accused and acquitted of being an accomplice to a murder. Truth, upset at the false accusation sullying her name, once again went to court and won, proving libel in the false accusations of manslaughter.

Truth continued to live in New York with her son Peter where she attended many revival camp meetings held in the city. She quickly established herself as a powerful speaker, capable of converting many. Meanwhile, her son Peter got into trouble and went to jail a few times, despite Sojourner’s efforts to help him. In 1839, in an effort to straighten out his life, Peter left to work on a whaling ship. Over the next three years she received 3 letter from him. When Peter’s ship returned in 1842, her son was not aboard and tragically he was never heard from again.

In 1843, felt the call from God to become an itinerant preacher, and changed her name from Isabella Baumfree to Sojourner Truth. With only a few possessions in a pillowcase, she worked her way up the Connecticut River Valley into Massachusetts, “exhorting people to embrace Jesus and refrain from sin.”

There is a holy city,

A world of light above,

Above the starry regions,

Built by the God of love.

— from Sojourner Truth’s favorite hymn

Sojourner loved the Community. “What good times we had,” she recalled.  “If any were infidels, I wish all the world were full of such infidels. Religion without humanity is a poor human stuff.”

Sojourner comes to Florence: The Northampton Association of Education and Industry (1843-1846)

In the winter of 1843, Sojourner Truth joined the recently established Northampton Association of Education and Industry (NAEI)

 in Florence, Massachusetts. The NAEI was a utopian community dedicated to racial, gender and economic equality and was organized around a communally operated silk factory. At the NAEI, Sojourner Truth lived in the factory boarding house with other members. She was appointed the director of the laundry, where she oversaw white men and women.

There she met many nationally influential abolitionists, including David Ruggles, William Lloyd Garrison, and Frederick Douglass. These leaders along with local antislavery activists Samuel L. Hill, Elisha Hammond, George W. Benson, Austin Ross, and JP Williston, helped establish Florence as a center of antislavery resistance. Though living conditions at the Northampton Association were spartan, no other place, Truth later recalled, offered her the same “equality of feeling,” “liberty of thought and speech,” and “largeness of soul.”

Lecturer: Champion of Racial Equality and Women’s Rights

Encouraged by her community in Florence, Truth gave her first antislavery speech in 1844. She went onto give innumerable speeches around the country against slavery before the Civil War, and then on freedmen’s and women’s rights.

She was renowned for her ability to keep audiences enthralled through singing and eloquent speeches. Her speaking kept her away from Florence for months at a time.

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave (1850)

In 1850, while living in Florence, Sojourner Truth dictated her life story to a friend, Olive Gilbert, an abolitionist and women’s rights advocate. William Lloyd Garrison published Truth’s autobiography as The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the best-selling author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, wrote an introduction to the 1855 edition. Truth’s Narrative both elevated her public profile and provided her much needed income to help her purchase her first house.

Sojourner Truth Buys her Own House

On April 15, 1850, Sojourner Truth signed the deed for a house on Park Street in Florence. She paid off the mortgage to Samuel Hill in 1854 with proceeds from sales of her books and cartes de visite, photographic portraits she sold at her lectures encaptioned, “I sell the shadow to support the substance.”

Leaving Florence, 1857

After 14 years in Florence, in 1857, the 60-year-old Sojourner Truth sold her house in Florence and moved with her daughter and grandson to Harmonia, a community of Quakers and spiritualists near Battle Creek, Michigan. She had lectured there the previous year and perhaps was drawn to live in another utopian community. While based at Harmonia, Truth continued to travel widely with her work.

Civil War Activism (1861-1865)

During the Civil War, Truth helped the war effort by recruiting black troops for the Union army and providing them with supplies. Her own grandson, James Caldwell, enlisted in the 54th  Massachusetts regiment.

In 1864, Truth worked at the National Freedman’s Relief Association in Washington DC to improve conditions for former slaves as well as at the Freedman’s hospital. She met with President Abraham Lincoln in October, 1864. In 1865, she rode public horse-drawn streetcars in Washington DC in support of their desegregation.

Sojourner Truth is credited with writing the song, “the Valiant Soldiers,” sung to the tune of “John Brown’s Body” or “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” for the 1st Michigan Colored Regiment. Truth is believed to have sung it in Detroit and Washington, DC.

Reform Activist, Battle Creek, MI  (1870-1883)

Ten years later in 1867, Truth purchased a home in the town of Battle Creek, Michigan not far from Harmonia. She lived surrounded by family- Sammy, now 19, Elizabeth and her husband William and their 8 year old son William. Truth’s daughter Diana lived nearby as well.

Even in her seventies, Truth continued to travel widely to work tirelessly for political and social change. Beginning in 1870, Truth strived (unsuccessfully) for seven years to secure federal land grants in western territories for former slaves, even meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant. Sojourner Truth also campaigned widely against capital punishment and in support of temperance and women’s rights. In 1872, along with hundreds of suffragists across the country including Susan B. Anthony, Truth tried to vote but was turned away at the polls.

On November 26, 1883, at the age of 86, Sojourner Truth died at her College St. home in Battle Creek. Her funeral was two days later and she was buried next to her grandson Sammy.

More About Sojourner Truth

Find out more about Sojourner Truth and see her home at 35 Park Street on the African American Heritage Trail walking tour.