Warrior Women

I just love the name Sojourner Truth. I don’t think I have ever come across a name as wonderful as Sojourner Truth.
She was born around 1797, or perhaps 1787. Records of slave children were not kept. Standard practice at the time. Her name at birth was Isabella Baumfree. She was born in Ulster County, New York and spent her early years living and working on the farm of her family’s owner, ninety-five miles north of New York City. Between 1806 and 1808, Sojourner Truth was sold as a slave three times.
A very inauspicious start to life, I’d say. But the circumstances of her early life did not stop Miss Sojourner Truth. On the contrary, she used her adverse experiences as a springboard to a life of working towards the eradication of slavery and advocating women’s rights.
In 1843, Isabella Baumfree changed her name to Sojourner Truth and so began her lifelong work. She travelled extensively, spoke on the street corners and in assembly halls, arranged for donations of food and clothing for black soldiers during the Civil War and traveled to the White House to meet President Abraham Lincoln.
Miss Sojourner Truth worked tirelessly to advocate for women’s rights – black and white. I am in awe, and have great respect for, a woman who turned a wretched childhood into a life of fighting for the rights of the downtrodden – rights that she had been denied.
In 1883, Sojourner Truth left this life. She is buried with her family in Battle Creek, Michigan.
(In 1851, Ms Truth gave a speech at a women’s convention in Ohio. It was entitled Ain’t I a Woman? and took the world by storm. If you want to read it, and I recommend that you do, click on this link: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sojtruth-woman.asp)