Last updated: January 15, 2024

Sojourner Truth (circa 1797-1883) was born into slavery in rural, Ulster County New York and named Isabella Baumfree, speaking only Dutch for her first 9 years.  She was beaten and abused by her owners and was sold to John Dumont in 1810 for about $175.  She married an older slave named Thomas around 1815 and bore five children.  According to New York law, all slaves were to be emancipated in 1827, but Dumont had promised to free her a year earlier than that. When he reneged, Isabella finished what she regarded as her seasonal duties (spinning a hundred pounds of wool) and, in November 1826, she left and was taken in by an abolitionist family.

Isabella’s earliest religious roots were in Methodism and she was greatly influenced by the nineteenth century Second Awakening movement. Isabella moved to New York City in 1828 and became a part of the perfectionist community that surrounded Robert Matthews, “the Prophet Matthias,” during the 1830s.  Then on Pentecost in 1843, she announced that “she felt called in spirit to leave” the city and go east. So she changed her name to Sojourner Truth and became an itinerant preacher who traveled throughout New York, preaching at many of the Adventist camp meetings.

At the same time, Sojourner began to interact with the increasingly outspoken abolitionists in the area.  During the 1850s, she was a very popular speaker and worked the abolitionist and women’s suffrage lecture circuit, using humor and wit to her advantage.  Sojourner provided for herself by carefully crafting her image and selling cartes de visite photographs of herself and copies of her life story (Narrative of Sojourner Truth – 1850) at the conventions and meetings she attended.

I don’t recall where I first read the famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech by Sojourner Truth.  Probably in an anthology of quotes someone put together to give voice to the lives of various women.  It is such a powerfully emotional statement, though, and I immediately wanted to include it in the quotes I was collecting to use in my annual Mary Magdalene celebration.  Here is the text of Sojourner’s quote as-published twelve years after the speech by Frances Dana Gage who was the president of the Ohio meeting:

Look at me.  Look at my arm.  I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me and ar’n’t I a woman?  I could work as much and eat as much as a man, (when I could get it,) and bear the lash as well – and ar’n’t I a woman?  I have borne thirteen children and seen them most all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard – and ar’n’t I a woman?

Sojourner Truth (1851)  As-remembered/described/quoted by Frances Dana Gage (1863)

Because no real transcript of her speech exists, we cannot be sure what she said exactly and what was invented or exaggerated by Gage. Other than “ar’n’t,” I have removed the dialect from the quote because although historically accurate, I feel that it serves to distance and distract us from her meaning.  Also, the care she took in presenting herself indicates that she would likely not care to be quoted in a southern dialect.

Sojourner Truth serves as a symbol, “Strong Black Woman,” for female African Americans and particularly for southern slaves in her lifetime.  Sojourner refused to define herself by enslavement and stood tall and insisted on being taken seriously both as a black and as a woman.  May we all have the courage and strength to speak our own Truths.

 

UPDATES: This blog post was updated on January 15, 2024 to include a second photograph of Sojourner Truth.

Reference 1:  Painter, Nell Irvin, “Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol,” W.W. Norton and Company, New York, NY, 1996.

Reference 2:  Truth, Sojourner, as-recorded by Olive Gilbert, “Narrative of Sojourner Truth,” 1850.

Image 1: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., object NPG.78.207.

Image 2: “Sojourner Truth,” Julie Henkener, 2016.

Image 3: Sojourner Truth, Image from the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.