Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth was an African American abolitionist, religious speaker and women’s rights advocate born into slavery in New York. After securing her freedom, she became a travelling preacher and campaigner whose speeches connected the abolition of slavery with demands for women’s civil and political equality.

Born Isabella Baumfree in New York, Truth escaped slavery with an infant daughter in 1826 and successfully went to court to recover a son who had been illegally sold out of state. She adopted the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 and developed a career as an itinerant preacher and lecturer. During and after the Civil War she supported Black troops, aid for freedpeople and campaigns for land and equal citizenship as well as women’s rights.

Hourly History’s Sojourner Truth recounts the life of the formerly enslaved New Yorker who became an itinerant preacher and a prominent advocate of abolition, women’s rights and racial equality. Additional non-fiction treatment of Sojourner Truth comes from Hourly History’s Reconstruction Era.