Snapshot Biographies

The Life and Faith of Sojourner Truth

Posted on by Historical Snapshots
Black-and-white photograph of Sojourner Truth, seated in a carved wooden chair and knitting. She wears a striped dress, white shawl, and white cap, with small round glasses. The caption beneath reads, “I sell the shadow to support the substance — Sojourner Truth,” referring to her practice of selling her own portrait to earn income and fund her activism.
Sojourner Truth, 1864

Her voice was deep and resonant, unmistakable. Those who heard her speak said that her words carried more than just messages. You could feel her conviction when she talked, with her remarks often focusing on freedom and womanhood, and of a nation still working towards fulfilling the promises of its ideals.

But before she would become known to the world as Sojourner Truth, or “Aunty Sojourner” as some called her, she was born enslaved around 1797, in Ulster County, New York, and named Isabella Baumfree. Slavery was still legal in parts of the North at the time.

As a child, Isabella spoke Dutch, the language of her first master’s household. But, like so many others enslaved in that era, she was sold again and again. And similar to most of those enslaved, she never learned to read or write, though she did learn English as she grew older.

By the time Isabella reached her teens, she had known the pain of bondage, the heartbreak of separation, and even marriage and motherhood. That was to be her life, it seemed. Then, in 1817, New York passed a law stipulating that all enslaved people in the state would be freed by 1827.

Promises, however, sometimes come slowly. When Isabella’s enslaver broke his word to grant her liberty a year early, Isabella walked away with her infant daughter in 1826. “I did not run away,” she would later say. “I walked away by daylight.”

Isabella found refuge in the home of Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen, who took her in. They gave her shelter, and they treated her as a person rather than property. And when her former enslaver came to reclaim her, the Van Wagenens refused. Instead, Isaac paid about $20 for the remainder of her service until the 1827 emancipation date. That act of conscience stayed with her for the rest of life.

Yet despite the change, Isabella’s newfound liberty did not feel fully whole. She soon learned that her young son Peter had been illegally sold to a Solomon W. Gedney, who took him to Alabama. This was a violation of New York law, which prohibited exporting people bound under the state’s gradual emancipation system out of New York.

Refusing to accept the loss, Isabella took Gedney to court, aided by local Quakers and a sympathetic lawyer. It was an extraordinary act for a poor black woman in the 1820s to stand before a judge and demand justice against a white man. Yet she did, and she won.

The court ordered her son’s return, with the judge stating that the “boy be delivered into the hands of his mother — having no other master, no other controller, no other conductor, but his mother.” After months of delay, the young boy was brought back to Isabella. It was the first known case in which a black woman successfully sued a white man to secure the freedom of a family member.

Isabella then moved to New York City, began working as a domestic servant, and became involved with a community of evangelical reformers. The city, home to nearly two hundred thousand people, was alive with change—crowded streets, noisy docks, and a growing spirit of revival under the Second Great Awakening. Amid the fervor, Isabella found her faith deepening. Religion had taken root in her long before, in the visions she experienced in bondage and the awakening that followed her escape, but the city gave it new strength. She came to believe that her life had been spared for a purpose. Faith began to guide her decisions.

But after years in the city, she grew disillusioned by the hypocrisy she saw among those who preached righteousness yet practiced exclusion. Even in places of worship, she found inequality. So she left, resolved to follow only the voice of God she heard within.

In 1843, that voice gave her a mission and a new name. “When I left the house of bondage, I left everything behind. I wa’n’t goin’ to keep nothin’ of Egypt on me, an’ so I went to the Lord an’ asked Him to give me a new name. And the Lord gave me Sojourner, because I was to travel up an’ down the land, showing the people their sins, an’ bein’ a sign unto them. Afterwards I told the Lord I wanted another name, ‘cause everybody else had two names; and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people.”

With that, Sojourner Truth was born.

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“If you want to get me out of the world, you had better get women votin’ soon. I shan’t go till I can do that.” – Sojourner Truth

With her new name and calling, Sojourner began traveling the Northeast with just a small bag, often walking from place to place and at times sleeping outside since she had little money. But what she did have was her faith and powerful voice. In meeting halls and churches throughout the region, Sojourner spoke of freedom, God, and equality in plain, simple terms, using repetition, rhythm, and a songlike cadence, while blending scripture, humor, and personal experience to convey her message. Her style and message held crowds like few others. People listened.

Some did mock her. Sojourner stood nearly six feet tall, was muscular, and spoke in a deep voice. Some accused her of being a man. But she fought back with courage and wisdom. In one case, she bared her breast to prove her womanhood and said to the heckler, “It is not my shame that I do this, but yours.” Even some of those who mocked her would come to be moved by her conviction.

By the 1850s, Sojourner had joined forces with reformers such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Lucretia Mott. She was becoming well-known. But it was a speech in 1851 at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, that became one of her defining legacies.

Many people had gathered at the event to advocate for expanding voting rights to more Americans. While on the surface the goal was equality for all, there was much debate within the movement over which specific groups should receive suffrage next.

In that charged room, Sojourner rose to speak.

Though the exact words were never recorded verbatim, the spirit of her message was unmistakable. Speaking with a commanding presence, she asked a question that would end up resonating for generations:

“Ain’t I a woman?”

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Notes

Read a snapshot biography of another advocate for women’s rights, Susan B. Anthony.

Sources

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