Sojourner Truth

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• Born: 1797
• Birthplace: Hurley, New York
• Died: 26 November 1883
• Best Known As: The freed slave and activist who said "Ain't I a Woman?"

Name at birth: Isabella Baumfree

Sojourner Truth began life as a slave and ended it as a celebrated anti-slavery activist. She was born in New York and was sold several times before escaping to freedom with an infant daughter in 1827. She worked as a housekeeper, lived in a religious commune, and eventually became a travelling speaker and preacher. Although she could not read or write, Truth was a captivating speaker: she reportedly stood nearly six feet tall and was a spirited evangelist who spoke out for women's rights and against slavery. Prompted by religious feelings, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth in 1843. Her memoir The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (as told to author Olive Gilbert) was published in 1850 and helped establish her in the public mind. The next year, at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, she gave her famous speech, "Ain't I A Woman," a short but stirring challenge to the notion that men were superior to women. During the Civil War she worked to support black Union soldiers, and after the war she continued to travel and preach on spiritual topics and as an advocate for the rights of blacks and women.

Truth was a friend of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe wrote an introduction to The Narrative of Sojourner Truth.

Truth, Sojourner (c. 1797–1883), itinerant preacher, abolitionist, and feminist. Sojourner Truth, born a slave in Ulster County, New York, a symbol of women's strength and black women's womanliness, is summed up in the phrase “ar'n't I a woman?” Known as Isabella VanWagener until 1843, she changed her name and became an itinerant preacher under the influence of Millerite Second Adventism.

In the 1840s Truth encountered feminist abolitionism during her stay in the Northampton (Mass.) Association of Education and Industry. There she met Olive Gilbert, who recorded The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondswoman of Olden Time, which Truth published in Boston in 1850. During the 1850s and 1860s sales to antislavery and feminist audiences of this narrative provided Truth's main source of income. Truth attended the 1851 Akron, Ohio, convention on women's rights in order to sell her book. The chair of that meeting, Frances Dana Gage, wrote the most popular version of Truth's speech and invented the “ar'n't I a woman?” refrain in 1863, which defined Truth's persona in the twentieth century.

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth went through seven editions, two of which–in 1875 (written)/1878 (published) and 1884–entailed major additions. In the 1870s Truth's Battle Creek, Michigan, neighbor and manager, Frances Titus, added Truth's “Book of Life” (her scrapbook), which includes letters and clippings from periodicals; after Truth's death, Titus appended obituaries and eulogies. The most commonly reprinted version of Truth's Narrative is that of the 1870s, which includes the texts of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1863 “Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl,” which introduced Truth to a wide audience, and Gage's version of Truth's 1851 speech.

As the story of a religious woman who had been a northern slave, Truth's Narrative has not yet found its niche in the literature of former slaves, in which the South figures as the necessary context of slavery. Truth is more widely acknowledged for her speech acts in the 1850s.

Bibliography

• Carleton Mabee, Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend, 1993.
• Nell Irvin Painter, “Representing Truth: Sojourner Truth's Ways of Knowing and Becoming Known,” Journal of American History 81 (Sept. 1994): 461–492.
• Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth, a Life, a Symbol, 1996

Nell Irvin Painter

(click to enlarge)
Sojourner Truth. (credit: Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library)

(born c. 1797, Ulster county, N.Y., U.S. — died Nov. 26, 1883, Battle Creek, Mich.) U.S. evangelist and social reformer. The daughter of slaves, she spent her childhood as an abused chattel of several masters. After being freed in about 1827, she worked as a domestic in New York City (1829 – 43) and began preaching on street corners with the evangelical missionary Elijah Pierson. Adopting the name Sojourner Truth, she left New York to obey a "call" to travel and preach. Adding abolitionism and women's rights to her religious messages, she traveled in the Midwest, where her magnetism drew large crowds. At the start of the American Civil War she gathered supplies for black volunteer regiments. In 1864 she went to Washington, D.C., where she helped integrate streetcars and was received at the White House by Pres. Abraham Lincoln. After the war she worked for the freedmen's relief organization and encouraged migration to Kansas and Missouri.

For more information on Sojourner Truth, visit Britannica.com.

Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797-1883) was a black American freedom fighter and orator. She believed herself chosen by God to preach His word and to help with the abolitionist effort to free her people.

Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree in Ulster County, N.Y., the daughter of an African named Baumfree (after his Dutch owner) and a woman called Elizabeth. About the age of 9 she was auctioned off to an Englishman named John Nealy. The Nealys understood very little of her Dutch jargon and, as a result, she was often brutally punished for no real reason.

Eventually Nealy sold her to a fisherman who owned a tavern in Kingston, N.Y. Here she acquired the idiomatic expressions which came to mark her speech. John J. Dumont, a nearby plantation owner, purchased her next. During her tenure with his family she married and had five children. In 1827, after New York had passed an emancipation act freeing its slaves, she prepared to take her family away. But Dumont began to show reluctance to this, so she ran away with only her youngest child.

She finally wound up in New York City. She worked at a menial job and through some friends came under the sway of a religious fanatic named Mathias. Eventually disillusioned by her life in New York and by Mathias, in 1843 she left on what she termed a pilgrimage to spread the truth of God's word. She assumed the name Sojourner Truth, which she believed God had given her as a symbolic representation of her mission in life. Soon her reputation as an orator spread, and large crowds greeted her wherever she spoke.

A controversial figure for most of the rest of her life, Truth engaged the courts in two rather unusual cases, winning them both and establishing precedents. Thus, she became the first black to win a slander suit against prominent whites, and the first black woman to test the legality of segregation of Washington, D.C., streetcars.

During the Civil War, Truth bought gifts for the soldiers with money raised from her lectures and helped fugitive slaves find work and housing. After the war she continued her tirade for the Lord and against racial injustice, even when old age and ill health restricted her activities to the confines of a Battle Creek, Mich., sanatorium. She died there on Nov. 26, 1883.

Further Reading

Sojourner Truth's speech at the Women's Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio, on May 29, 1851, is in The Faith of Our Fathers, edited by Irving Mark and Eugene L. Schwaab. Works on Sojourner Truth include Olive Gilbert, Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1878; repr. 1968); Arthur Huff Fauset, Sojourner Truth: God's Faithful Pilgrim (1938), especially good for insights into the religious implications of her life; Hertha E. Pauli, Her Name Was Sojourner Truth (1962); and Jacqueline Bernard, Journey toward Freedom: The Story of Sojourner Truth (1967). Lerone Bennett, Jr., Pioneers in Protest (1968), devotes a chapter to her. A brief biography is in Wilhelmena S. Robinson, Historical Negro Biographies (1968).

(c. 1797-1883), evangelist, abolitionist, and feminist. Sojourner Truth is remembered for her unschooled but remarkable voice raised in support of abolitionism, the freedmen, and women's rights. Tales of her aggressive platform style, of her challenge to Frederick Douglass on the issue of violence against slavery ("Frederick! Is God dead?"), and of her baring her breasts before a crude audience who had challenged her womanhood grace the pages of abolitionist lore.

Truth was six feet tall, blessed with a powerful voice (she spoke English with a Dutch accent), and driven by deep religious conviction. Harriet Beecher Stowe attested to Truth's personal magnetism, saying that she had never "been conversant with anyone who had more of that silent and subtle power which we call personal presence than this woman." Truth was born of slave parents owned by a wealthy Dutch patroon in Ulster County, New York. Details of her early life remain cloudy. What is clear is that her name was Isabella and she served a household in New Paltz, New York, from 1810 to 1827, where she bore some five children by a fellow slave. At least two of her daughters and one son were sold away from her during these years.

Isabella escaped slavery in 1827, one year before mandatory emancipation in New York State, by fleeing to a Quaker family, the Van Wageners, whose name she took. She moved to New York City, worked as a domestic, became involved in moral reform, embraced evangelical religion, started her street-corner preaching career, and eventually joined a utopian community in Sing Sing, New York. Illiterate and a mystic, Isabella nevertheless acquired a wide knowledge of the Bible and emerged in the 1840s in Massachusetts, working among the Garrisonian abolitionists. A popular platform figure, she told stories and sang gospel songs that instructed and entertained. Adopting the name "Sojourner Truth" in 1843, she became a wandering orator. In the mid-1850s she settled in Battle Creek, Michigan, her base of operations for the rest of her life.

During the Civil War, Truth tramped the roads of Michigan collecting food and clothing for black regiments. She traveled to Washington, D.C., where she met with Abraham Lincoln at the White House, and immersed herself in relief work for the freedpeople. During Reconstruction, Truth barely supported herself by selling a narrative of her life as well as her "shadows," photographs of herself. She lent her unique skills to the women's suffrage movement and initiated a petition drive to obtain land for the freedpeople, even suggesting the idea of a "Negro state" in the West. She preached cleanliness and godliness among the freedpeople and dictated many letters about the land question, which provide rich details about that aspect of Reconstruction.

Truth's most important legacy is the tone and substance of her language. As an old woman she stumped the country providing emancipation with an eloquent epigraph: "Give 'em land and an outset, and hab teachers learn 'em to read. Den they can be somebody." Few modern activists have better described politicians or the purpose of a petition drive than Truth did: "Send tons of paper down to Washington for them spouters to chaw on." And when she was brutally knocked off of Washington's segregated streetcars, she denounced racism: "It is hard for the old slaveholding spirit to die, but die it must." She herself died of old age and ulcerated legs in 1883; her funeral and burial in Battle Creek was the largest that town had ever seen, testimony to her hold on America's historical imagination.

Bibliography:

Jacqueline Bernard, Journey toward Freedom: The Story of Sojourner Truth (1967); Hertha Pauli, Her Name Was Sojourner Truth (1962).

Author:

David W. Blight

See also Abolitionist Movement; Feminist Movement; Free Negroes, 1619-1860; Reconstruction; Slavery; Suffrage.

An abolitionist and escaped slave of the nineteenth century. She was famous as a speaker against slavery. (See abolitionism.)

Sojourner Truth was a nineteenth-century African American evangelist who embraced abolitionism and women's rights. A charismatic speaker, she became one of the best-known abolitionists of her day.

Born a slave around 1797 in Ulster County, New York, Isabella Baumfree, as she was originally named, lived with several masters. She bore at least five children to a fellow slave named Thomas and took the name of her last master, Isaac Van Wagener, in 1827. She was freed in 1828 when a New York law abolished slavery within the state, and with the help of Quaker friends, she recovered a young son who had been illegally sold into slavery in the South.

In 1829 she moved to New York City and worked as a domestic servant. Since childhood she had experienced visions and heard voices, which she attributed to God. Her mystic bent led her to become associated with Elijah Person, a New York religious missionary. She worked and preached with Person in the streets of the city, and in 1843 she had a religious experience in which she believed that God commanded her to travel beyond New York to spread the Christian gospel. She took the name Sojourner Truth and traveled throughout the eastern states as an evangelist.

Truth soon became acquainted with the abolitionist movement and its leaders. She adopted their message, speaking out against slavery. Her speaking tours expanded as abolitionists realized her effectiveness as a lecturer. In 1850 she toured the Midwest and drew large, enthusiastic crowds. Because she was illiterate, she dictated her life story, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, and sold the book at her lectures as a means of supporting herself.

In the early 1850s, she met leaders of the emerging women's rights movement, most notably Lucretia Mott. Truth recognized the connection between the inferior legal status of African Americans and women in general. Soon she was speaking before women's rights groups, advocating the right to vote. Her most famous speech was entitled Ain't I a Woman?

During the 1850s, Truth settled in Battle Creek, Michigan, but went to Washington, D.C., in 1864 to meet with President Abraham Lincoln. She remained in Washington to help the war effort, collecting supplies for black volunteer regiments serving in the Union army and helping escaped slaves find jobs and homes.

After the war she joined the National Freedmen's Relief Association, working with former slaves to prepare them for a different type of life. Truth believed that former slaves should be given free land in the West, but her "Negro State" proposal failed to interest Congress. Nevertheless, during the 1870s she encouraged African Americans to resettle in Kansas and Missouri.

Truth remained on the public speaking circuit until 1875, when she retired to Battle Creek. She died there on November 26, 1883.

Quotes:

"Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other."

Sojourner Truth
photograph by Mathew Brady, an albumen silver print from approximately 1864
Born	Isabella Baumfree c. 1797 Swartekill, New York
Died	November 26, 1883 (aged 86) Battle Creek, Michigan
Occupation	Domestic servant, Abolitionist, Author
Parents	James and Elizabeth Baumfree

Sojourner Truth (1797 – November 26, 1883) was the self-given name, from 1843, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York. Her best-known speech, Ain't I a Woman?, was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

Contents 1 Early years 2 Freedom 3 "The Truth Calls Me" 3.1 "Ain't I a Woman?" 4 On a mission 5 Cultural references 6 Books 7 References 8 External links

Early years

She was one of thirteen children born to James and Elizabeth Baumfree, who were slaves of Colonel Hardenbergh. The Hardenbergh estate was in a hilly area called by the Dutch name Swartekill (just north of present-day Rifton), in the town of Esopus, New York, 95 miles north of New York City.^[1] After the colonel's death, ownership of the family slaves passed to his son, Charles Hardenbergh. ^[2]

After the death of Charles Hardenbergh in 1806, Truth, known as Belle, was sold at an auction. She was about 9 years old and was included with a flock of sheep for $100 to John Neely, near Kingston, New York. Until she was sold, Truth spoke only Dutch.^[3] She suffered many hardships at the hands of Neely, whom she later described as cruel and harsh and who once beat her with a bundle of rods. Truth previously said Neely raped and beat her daily. Neely sold her in 1808, for $105, to Martinus Schryver of Port Ewen, a tavern keeper, who owned her for 18 months. Schryver sold her in 1810, for $175, to John Dumont of West Park, New York.^[4] Although this fourth owner was kindly disposed toward her, his wife found numerous ways to harass Truth and make her life more difficult.^[2]

Around 1815, Truth met and fell in love with a slave named Robert from a neighboring farm. Robert's owner (Catlin) forbade the relationship; he did not want his slave to have children with a slave he did not own, because he would not own the children. Robert was savagely beaten and Truth never saw him again. Later, he died from the previous injuries.^[5] In 1817, Truth was forced by Dumont to marry an older slave named Thomas. She had five children: Diana (1815), fathered by Robert; and Thomas who died shortly after birth, Peter (1821), Elizabeth (1825), and Sophia (ca. 1826), fathered by Thomas.^[6]

Freedom

The state of New York began, in 1799, to legislate the abolition of slavery, although the process of emancipating New York slaves was not complete until July 4, 1827. Dumont had promised Truth freedom a year before the state emancipation, "if she would do well and be faithful." However, he changed his mind, claiming a hand injury had made her less productive. She was infuriated. She continued working until she felt she had done enough to satisfy her sense of obligation to him by spinning 100 pounds of wool.

Late in 1826, Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter, Sophia. She had to leave her other children behind because they were not legally freed in the emancipation order until they had served as bound servants into their twenties.^[3] She later said:

“

I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right.[3]

”

She found her way to the home of Isaac and Maria Van Wagener, who took her and her baby in. Isaac offered to buy her services for the remainder of the year (until the state's emancipation took effect), which Dumont accepted for $20.^[3] She lived there until the New York State Emancipation Act was approved a year later.

Truth learned that her son Peter, then 5 years old, had been sold illegally by Dumont to an owner in Alabama. With the help of the Van Wageners, she took the issue to court and, after months of legal proceedings, got back her son, who had been abused by his new owner.^[2] Truth became the first black woman to go to court against a white man and win the case.^{[citation needed]} See also Mum Bett

Truth had a life-changing religious experience during her stay with the Van Wageners, and became a devout Christian. In 1829 she moved with her son Peter to New York City, where she worked as a housekeeper for Elijah Pierson, a Christian Evangelist. In 1832, she met Robert Matthews, also known as Matthias Kingdom or Prophet Matthias, and went to work for him as a housekeeper.^[2] In a bizarre twist of fate, Elijah Pierson died, and Robert Matthews and Truth were accused of stealing from and poisoning him. Both were acquitted and Robert Matthews moved west.^[3]

In 1839, Truth's son Peter took a job on a whaling ship called the Zone of Nantucket. From 1840 to 1841, she received three letters from him, though in his third letter he told her he had sent five. When the ship returned to port in 1842, Peter was not on board and Truth never heard from him again.^[2]

"The Truth Calls Me"

On June 1, 1843, Truth changed her name to Sojourner Truth and told her friends, "The Spirit calls me, and I must go." She became a Methodist, and left to make her way traveling and preaching about abolition. In 1844, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts. Founded by abolitionists, the organization supported women's rights and religious tolerance as well as pacifism. There were 210 members and they lived on 500 acres (2 km²), raising livestock, running a sawmill, a gristmill, and a silk factory. While there, Truth met William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Ruggles. In 1846, the group disbanded, unable to support itself.^[3] In 1847, she went to work as a housekeeper for George Benson, the brother-in-law of William Lloyd Garrison. In 1849, she visited John Dumont before he moved west.^[2]

Truth started dictating her memoirs to her friend Olive Gilbert, and in 1850 William Lloyd Garrison privately published her book, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave.^[3] That same year, she purchased a home in Northampton for $300, and spoke at the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts.

"Ain't I a Woman?"

Main article: Ain't I a Woman?

In 1851, Truth left Northampton to join George Thompson, an abolitionist and speaker. In May, she attended the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio where she delivered her famous speech later known as "Ain't I a Woman." The convention was organized by Hannah Tracy and Frances Dana Barker Gage, who both were present when Truth spoke. Different versions of Truth's words have been recorded, with the first one published a month later by Marius Robinson, a newspaper owner and editor who was in the audience. Robinson's recounting of the speech included no instance of the question "Ain't I a Woman?" Twelve years later in May 1863, Gage published another, very different, version. In it, Truth's speech pattern had characteristics of Southern slaves, and the speech included sentences and phrases that Robinson didn't report. Gage's version of the speech became the historic standard, and is known as "Ain't I a Woman?" because that question was repeated four times.^[7] Truth's own speech pattern was not Southern in nature, as she was born and raised in New York, and spoke only Dutch until she was nine years old.^[8]

In contrast to Robinson's report, Gage's 1863 version included Truth saying her 13 children were sold away from her into slavery. Truth is widely believed to have had five children, with one sold away, and was never known to boast more children.^[8] Gage's 1863 recollection of the convention conflicts with her own report directly after the convention: Gage wrote in 1851 that Akron in general and the press in particular were largely friendly to the woman's rights convention, but in 1863 she wrote that the convention leaders were fearful of the "mobbish" opponents.^[8] Other eyewitness reports of Truth's speech told a calm story, one where all faces were "beaming with joyous gladness" at the session where Truth spoke; that not "one discordant note" interrupted the harmony of the proceedings.^[8] In contemporary reports, Truth was warmly received by the convention-goers, the majority of whom were long-standing abolitionists, friendly to progressive ideas of race and civil rights.^[8] In Gage's 1863 version, Truth was met with hisses, with voices calling to prevent her from speaking.^[9]

Over the next decade, Truth spoke before dozens, perhaps hundreds, of audiences. From 1851 to 1853, Truth worked with Marius Robinson, the editor of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle, and traveled around that state speaking. In 1853, she spoke at a suffragist "mob convention" at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City; that year she also met Harriet Beecher Stowe.^[2] In 1856, she traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan, to speak to a group called the Friends of Human Progress. In 1858, someone interrupted a speech and accused her of being a man; Truth opened her blouse and revealed her breasts.^[2][3]

On a mission

Truth sold her home in Northampton in 1857 and bought a house in Harmonia, Michigan, just west of Battle Creek.^[3] According to the 1860 census, her household in Harmonia included her daughter, Elizabeth Banks (age 35), and her grandsons James Caldwell (misspelled as "Colvin"; age 16) and Sammy Banks (age 8).^[2]

Truth's carte de visite, which she sold to raise money (see inscription).

During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army. Her grandson, James Caldwell, enlisted in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. In 1864, Truth was employed by the National Freedman's Relief Association in Washington, D.C., where she worked diligently to improve conditions for African-Americans. In October of that year, she met President Abraham Lincoln.^[2] In 1865, while working at the Freedman's Hospital in Washington, Truth rode in the streetcars to help force their desegregation.^[2]

Truth is credited with writing a song, "The Valiant Soldiers", for the 1st Michigan Colored Regiment; it was said to be composed during the war and sung by her in Detroit and Washington, D.C. It is sung to the tune of "John Brown's Body" or "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". ^[10] Although Truth claimed to have written the words, it has been disputed (see Marching Song of the First Arkansas).

In 1867, Truth moved from Harmonia to Battle Creek. In 1868, she traveled to western New York and visited with Amy Post, and continued traveling all over the East Coast. At a speaking engagement in Florence, Massachusetts, after she had just returned from a very tiring trip, when Truth was called upon to speak she stood up and said,

“

Children, I have come here like the rest of you, to hear what I have to say.[11]

”

In 1870, Truth tried to secure land grants from the federal government to former slaves, a project she pursued for seven years without success. While in Washington, D.C., she had a meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant in the White House. In 1872, she returned to Battle Creek and tried to vote in the presidential election, but was turned away at the polling place.

Truth spoke about abolition, women's rights, prison reform, and preached to the Michigan Legislature against capital punishment. Not everyone welcomed her preaching and lectures, but she had many friends and staunch support among many influential people at the time, including Amy Post, Parker Pillsbury, Frances Gage, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Laura Smith Haviland, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony."^[11]

Several days before Truth died, a reporter came from the Grand Rapids Eagle to interview her. "Her face was drawn and emaciated and she was apparently suffering great pain. Her eyes were very bright and mind alert although it was difficult for her to talk." ^[2] Truth died on November 26, 1883, at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan, and was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Battle Creek, beside other family members.

Cultural references

• 1862 -- William Wetmore Story's statue, "The Libyan Sibyl", inspired by Sojourner Truth, won an award at the London World Exhibition.^[3]
• 1892 -- Albion artist Frank Courter is commissioned to paint the meeting between Truth and President Abraham Lincoln.^[2]
• 1981 -- Truth is inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.^[2]
• 1981 -- Feminist theorist and author bell hooks titles her first major work after Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech.

Sojourner Truth sculpture, detail Battle Creek, Michigan

• 1983 -- Truth is in the first group of women inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in Lansing.^[2]
• 1986 -- U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative postage stamp honoring Sojourner Truth.^[2][12]
• 1997 -- The NASA Mars Pathfinder mission's robotic rover was named "Sojourner" after her.^[13]
• 1998 -- S.T. Writes Home appears on the web offering "Letters to Mom from Sojourner Truth," in which the Mars Pathfinder Rover at times echoes its namesake.
• 1999 -- The Broadway musical The Civil War includes Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman. On the 1999 cast recording, it was performed by Maya Angelou.
• The leftist group the Sojourner Truth Organization is named after her.
• The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commemorates her as a renewer of society on March 10, with Harriet Tubman.
• In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Sojourner Truth on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. ^[14]
• 2004 -- The King's College, located inside the Empire State Building in New York City, has a house system (modeled after Oxford University's), and each house is named after an influential leader. In 2004, they voted to name one of the houses 'The House of Sojourner Truth'.
• She is commemorated in a monument of "Michigan Legal Milestones" erected by the State Bar of Michigan.^[15]
• She is also commemorated together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer and Harriet Ross Tubman in the calendar of saints of the Episcopal Church on July 20.
• The Library at the State University of New York at New Paltz, in New Paltz, New York, is named in her honor.
• 2009 --The first black woman honored with a bust in the US Capitol.^[16]The bust was sculpted by noted artist Artis Lane.

Books

• Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave (1850).
  • Dover Publications 1997 edition: ISBN 0-486-29899-X
  • Penguin Classics 1998 edition: ISBN 0-14-043678-2. Introduction & notes by Nell Irvin Painter.
  • University of Pennsylvania online edition (html format, one chapter per page)
  • University of Virginia online edition (HTML format, 207 kB, entire book on one page)
• Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) ISBN 0-19-509835-8
• Carleton Mabee with Susan Mabee Newhouse, Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend (New York and London: New York University Press, 1993) ISBN 0-8147-5525-9
• Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1996) ISBN 0-393-31708-0
• Jacqueline Sheehan, Truth: A Novel (New York: Free Press, 2003) ISBN 0-7432-4444-3
• Erlene Stetson and Linda David, Glorying in Tribulation: The Lifework of Sojourner Truth (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994) ISBN 0-87013-337-3
• William Leete Stone, Matthias and his Impostures- or, The Progress of Fanaticism (New York, 1835) Internet Archive online edition (pdf format, 16.9 MB, entire book on one pdf)
• Gilbert Vale, Fanaticism - Its Source and Influence Illustrated by the Simple Narrative of Isabella, in the Case of Matthias, Mr. and Mrs. B. Folger, Mr. Pierson, Mr. Mills, Catherine, Isabella, &c. &c. (New York, 1835) Google Books online edition (pdf format, 9.9 MB, entire book on one pdf or one page per page)

Sojourner Truth, engraving from 1897

References

1. ^ Whalin, W. Terry (199ŵ7). Sojourner Truth. Barbour Publishing, Inc.. ISBN 9781593106294. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} "Amazing Life page". Sojourner Truth Institute site. http://www.sojournertruth.org/History/Biography/NY.htm. Retrieved December 28, 2006. 
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} "Sojourner Truth page". Women in History site. http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/trut-soj.htm. Retrieved December 28, 2006. 
4. ^ "State University of New York at New Paltz". On the trail of Sojourner Truth in Ulster County, New York by Corinne Nyquist Librarian, Sojourner Truth Library. http://www.newpaltz.edu/sojourner_truth/. Retrieved March 6, 2008. 
5. ^ "Sojourner Truth page". Narrative of Sojourner Truth. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/truth/1850/1850.html. Retrieved December 28, 2006. 
6. ^ Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (Norton, 1996), p. 19.
7. ^ Craig, Maxine Leeds. Ain't I A Beauty Queen: Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race, Oxford University Press USA, 2002, p. 7. ISBN 019515262X
8. ^ ^{a b c d e} Mabee, Carleton; Susan Mabee Newhouse. Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend, NYU Press, 1995, pp. 67–82. ISBN 0814755259
9. ^ Stanton, Elizabeth Cady; Anthony, Susan Brownell; Gage, Matilda Joslyn. History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I, pp. 115–116, covering 1848–1861. Copyright 1881.
10. ^ "Documenting the American South". Narrative of Sojourner Truth. http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/truth84/truth84.html. Retrieved November 7, 2007. 
11. ^ ^{a b} "Sojourner Truth page". Sojourner Truth Biography. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/9840/sojourn.html. Retrieved December 28, 2006. 
12. ^ Scott catalog # 2203, first day of issue on February 4, 1986.
13. ^ NASA, NASA Names First Rover to Explore the Surface of Mars. Accessed December 4, 2006.
14. ^ Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-963-8.
15. ^ State Bar of Michigan.
16. ^ PRNewswire. Pelosi Remarks at Sojourner Truth Bust Unveiling, Retrieved on April 28, 2009.

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Sojourner Truth

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Sojourner Truth

• Works by Sojourner Truth at Project Gutenberg
• Sojourner Truth: Online Resources, from the Library of Congress
• On the trail of Sojourner Truth SUNY New Paltz, Sojourner Truth Library
• Sojourner Truth Institute
• Poem form of Ain't I a Woman?
• bio at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Learning to Give site
• Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828. Boston: The Author, 1850.
• Narrative of Sojourner Truth; a Bondswoman of Olden Time, Emancipated by the New York Legislature in the Early Part of the Present Century; with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence, Drawn from Her "Book of Life" Boston: For the Author, 1875.
• Narrative of Sojourner Truth; a Bondswoman of Olden Time, Emancipated by the New York Legislature in the Early Part of the Present Century; with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her "Book of Life;" Also, a Memorial Chapter, Giving the Particulars of Her Last Sickness and Death. Battle Creek, Mich.: Review and Herald Office, 1884.
• The Narrative of Sojurner Truth from American Studies at the University of Virginia

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sojourner Truth

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Persondata
NAME	Truth, Sojourner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Isabella Baumfree (Bomefree)
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Domestic servant, Abolitionist, Author
DATE OF BIRTH	Circa 1797
PLACE OF BIRTH	Swartekill, New York
DATE OF DEATH	November 26, 1883
PLACE OF DEATH	Battle Creek, Michigan

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