Sojourner Truth: More Than Just a Speech
- caisa8
- Jul 29, 2022
- 6 min read
Originally posted to Facebook 1/18/19; this post has been expanded and updated.
Sojourner Truth is best known for her speech “Ain’t I a Woman”, pointing out the lack of recognition Black women were given during suffrage; however, Truth did so much more for abolition and suffrage than making speeches! Let’s take a look at her incredible life.
Truth was born Isabella Baumfree in Swartekill, NY (north of present-day Rifton) between 1797 and 1800. Since she was born into slavery, details about her early life are not well known. For instance, she had either 9 or 11 siblings; we’re not sure how many. Between 1806 and 1810, she was sold 3 times, finally ending in West Park, NY with John Dumont. Life enslaved with the Dumont family was incredibly dark; Dumont sexually assaulted her repeatedly, which led to Dumont’s wife harassing Truth due to jealousy. In 1815 Truth would give birth to Dumont’s child, a girl named Diana. In 1815, Truth fell in love with a man named Robert, who was enslaved on a different farm. However, Robert’s “owner”, Charles Catton, forbade their relationship, as he would not “own” any children that would be born. Robert was ripped from Truth, and she never saw him again. A few years later, she married an enslaved man named Thomas and bore him three children: Peter, Elizabeth, and Sophia.
In 1799, New York abolished slavery, but emancipation would not be complete until July 4, 1827; thus, it was called the Gradual Emancipation Law of 1799. Dumont promised to free Truth a year early, in 1826; however, he changed his mind. So in late 1826, Truth escaped with infant Sophia; sadly, she could not bring her children due to the wording of the legislation: children born after July 4, 1799, had to be bound as servants until their 20s. Truth and Sophia were taken in by Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen, who bought Truth’s “services” from Dumont for $20 ($499.65 in today’s dollars). In reality, she was not enslaved by the couple. She lived with the Van Wagenen's until she was fully emancipated in 1827. Soon after, she found out her son Peter had been illegally sold to a plantation in Alabama. Under the name Isabella Van Wagenen, she went to the New York Supreme Court and filed suit against Peter’s “owner”, Solomon Gedney. It took months of legal proceedings, but in 1828, she won, and her son Peter was returned to her. This was one of the first times a Black person won a case of this kind! Fun fact: the documents for this court case were rediscovered by the New York State Archives in February of 2022! Support your local historical societies and archives; you never know what gems are hiding!
Truth spent several years working as a housekeeper in several homes; 1843 became a turning point for her. This was the year she changed her name to Sojourner Truth, saying that the spirit of God was telling her to preach the truth. She packed a few possessions in a pillowcase and began traveling North to speak on abolition and women’s rights. She worked and spoke with multiple religious groups, traveling through the Northwestern part of the country, and meeting people like Fredrick Douglass, David Ruggles, and William Lloyd Garrison, who would eventually publish her memoir, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: a Northern Slave. In 1850 she spoke at the first National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester, MA.
1851 is the year Truth gave her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech. Her speech was not written down when she gave it; Truth herself could not write, and no one had to forethought to take down her words as she spoke them. In the speech, Truth lamented the fact that many suffragettes ignored the plight of Black, enslaved women. She could plow, chop, mow and reap like any man, so why was she, and women like her, not included in the fight for women’s rights. She even entireties men to join the cause, for men and women were both equal in the eyes of God.
Two versions of her speech were written after the fact: the first was printed in the newspaper Anti-Slavery Bugle by Rev. Marius Robinson, who had been in the audience during the speech. The second one was written in 1863, a full 12 years later, by Frances Dana Barker Gage, one of the organizers of the original convention. It is Gage’s account that is most famous. Now, dear readers, please forgive me as I take a moment to rant. I have a lot of issues with this account of the speech, for so very many reasons. First off, Gage’s account is written in what people think of as the “Southern Slave Dialect”. Truth was not Southern; she was born in New York, as you saw earlier. New York at that time had been settled by lots of Dutch people and Dutch descendants. Truth only spoke Dutch until she was 9. She never lived in the South, so there is no reason she would speak like that. Gage’s speech says that Truth saw all 13 of her children sold in slavery; the records available show Truth only had 5 (the 4 mentioned above, and a son named James who did not survive childhood). Truth never claimed to have more than these 5 children. Gage also claimed that Truth’s speech was met with much contention, including booing and hissing from the audience. This contradicts Gage’s own claims from 1851, where she wrote that Truth’s speech was met with a warm reception, and people greatly enjoyed the speech; this is supported by several other contemporary reports of the convention.
So why would this 1863 version of the speech be written, and why is it so widely accepted today? Two main reasons: Racism, and manipulation. The 1863 version fit much better with the narrative of slavery; it still does. Ever since formal education became a thing, we equate uneducated with unintelligent. Slaves were not given formal education, either during or directly after slavery, so they couldn’t possibly speak in an intelligent manner. Truth could not read or write, so she couldn’t possibly sound educated (read: White). These days, the 1863 version still fits with our narrative of slavery, especially our views that slavery was only a Southern thing. Since the Civil War, we “progressive” Northerners have painted the South as evil and stupid, because then we can say “look at us, we’re so much better, we didn’t have slaves!” But slavery thrived in the North for quite some time. Maybe it ended in the North earlier than the South, but does that really make us all that much better? And ignoring the fact that it happened in the North will do nothing to heal the generational trauma Black people are still working through to this day. Before I end my rant, I would encourage all readers to check out https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/, where you can read the two versions of the speech side by side and see what I’m talking about.
Okay, back to Sojourner’s amazing life. During the Civil War, Truth worked to recruit Black troops into the Union Army; her own grandson enlisted with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. Towards the end of the war, she was employed by the National Freedman's Relief Association in Washington, D.C to improve conditions for Black citizens who were coming out of slavery. That same year, Abraham Lincoln invited her to the White House. While in Washington, she rode Whites only streetcars to fight segregation (sound familiar?). After the war, she worked to secure land grants for freed slaves; the federal government refused to give these grants. In 1872, she even tried to vote for Ulysses S. Grant but was turned away from the polling place. Throughout all of this, Truth continued to travel and speak not only on issues of race and women’s rights but on things like prison reform and ending capital punishment.
Truth died in her home on November 26, 1883. Her funeral was attended by over 1,000 people, and Fredrick Douglass gave her eulogy. Even 126 years after her death, Truth continued to break barriers. In 2009, a bust of Truth was installed in the Capitol Building, making her the first Black person to have a statue of any kind in the Capitol. There are numerous statues and works of art depicting Truth; she’s been on stamps; a Mars Rover was named after her, and several schools and libraries are named after her. Sojourner Truth reminded us that women of all races deserve equal rights, and despite my issues with the incorrect speech, it has kept her memory alive for over 100 years and I can’t be mad at that.
Sojourner Truth, we honor you!
Sources: The Atlantic, "Black America's Neglected Origin Stories" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/06/estebanico-first-africans-america/618714/
Women in History, "Sojourner Truth" https://www.womeninhistoryohio.com/sojourner-truth-isabella-baumfree.html
David Ruggles Center for History & Education, "Sojourner Truth" https://davidrugglescenter.org/sojourner-truth/
Times Union, "State Archives find Sojourner Truth's historic court case" https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/State-Archives-find-documents-Sojourner-Truth-s-16816351.php
The Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth, edited by Olive Gilbert https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/truth/1850/1850.html
The Sojourner Truth Project, "Compare the Speeches" https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches/
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