Sojourner Truth's Legacy PDF

# Sojourner Truth C. 1797-NOVEMBER 26, 1883 ## "YOU MAY HISS AS MUCH AS YOU PLEASE BUT WOMEN WILL GET THEIR RIGHTS ANYWAY. " It's hard to imagine being able to change the way people think or act if you can't read or write, or even sign your name. But one woman who was entirely illiterate made he...

# Sojourner Truth C. 1797-NOVEMBER 26, 1883 ## "YOU MAY HISS AS MUCH AS YOU PLEASE BUT WOMEN WILL GET THEIR RIGHTS ANYWAY. " It's hard to imagine being able to change the way people think or act if you can't read or write, or even sign your name. But one woman who was entirely illiterate made her mark on the world anyway. Her name was Sojourner Truth. Born into slavery in New Paltz, New York, Sojourner was often beaten as a child - once with heated iron rods because she didn't understand English, only the Dutch she had learned from her first owner. One of her owners housed his slaves in a damp, unheated, dirt-floor basement that regularly flooded. Sojourner once saw a slave killed with a blow to the head: "Oh! My God! What a way is this of treating human beings?" she cried. Enslaved children weren't educated, but Sojourner's parents passed down stories from their family history and the Bible. Sojourner fully embraced this way of learning—as a suffrage and an antislavery activist, she made a lasting impression through her own stories, poems, and songs. New York State began freeing slaves at the end of the 1700s. Sojourner's owner promised to free her in 1826, when she was about thirty years old, but he didn't. "Ah! The slaveholders are terrible for promising to give you this or that... and when the time of fulfillment comes... they recollect nothing of the kind: and you are ... taunted with being a liar," she said. She escaped one morning that year, taking only her baby and leaving her other four children with their father. A Quaker family took Sojourner in when she first escaped. Many Quakers helped escaped slaves on their own or through the Underground Railroad, a route of safe houses leading north. Sojourner moved from place to place, living where she had friends or could find work. In the mid-1840s, Sojourner began speaking out against slavery. She crisscrossed the country, speaking to audiences that included both men and women. In those days, women didn't speak in public at all, let alone to audiences of both sexes. Not only that, but Sojourner most often spoke to white audiences. An African American woman telling white people what to do? And a former slave at that! Sojourner was a bold woman who claimed her space in the free world. At over six feet tall, Sojourner towered over people, and her piercing stare and confident voice made her someone who couldn't be ignored. But she didn't bully people. In 1852, at a meaning in Akron, Ohio, she walked up the aisle of a church and sat down quietly on the steps to the pulpit. She didn't say a word while other people spoke. But when she was ready, she asked for permission to speak. Sojourner could see that women were being denied their rights, just as slaves were. She began to speak out for suffrage: "Man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard," she declared. Often, she called on her audience's background of faith to make her points: "I have heard the Bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin," she would say. "Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again." Sojourner didn't shy away from scolding anyone who heckled her: "You may hiss as much as you please, but women will get their rights anyway," she once told an audience of angry men who were booing her speech. Her lack of education held Sojourner back in some ways. People had to write letters for her and organize her speaking schedule. She needed help reading train schedules, newspaper articles, and documents. Often, a grandson would serve as her aide. But she was widely respected and was even invited to meet with presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. ### Sojourner Truth's Name Sojourner Truth's name was a powerful symbol of her life's work. But it was not the name she was given at birth. Sojourner was named Isabelle at birth, and she was called Belle. Her parents went by Baumfree and Mau Mau Bett. Slaves did not have last names - they were given the last name of the slave owner. Belle's last name was changed for each of the owners she had before she escaped - Hardenbergh for two owners, then Neely, Schryver, and Dumont. As a freewoman, Belle didn't want a name that had defined her as a slave. She wanted to be known as a reformer, a person who works to change society for the better. In 1843, when she started speaking out against slavery, she chose the name Sojourner, meaning a person who doesn't stay in in place. To her, that name described her God-given mission as a traveling speaker for reform causes. Wanting a last name to call her own, she chose Truth because, she said, "I was to declare the truth to the people." ### Sojourner Truth's Fight for Freedom Although she never took a leadership role,Sojourner worked closely with Lucretia Mott and the early suffrage movement's other leaders. She backed the cause for decades, speaking publicly well into her eighties. She was a powerful advocate for the cause, convincing people not with academic argument, but with fiery homespun talk that stirred her listeners' emotions. Sojourner Truth was the first African American woman to win a court case against a white person in the United States. In 1828, she sued a slave owner who had illegally sold her five-year-old son and won his freedom.