Activism
Sojourner Truth was an activist for abolition, civil rights, women’s rights, and even temperance. After moving to New York, she renamed herself Sojourner Truth, believing that the “Spirit called on her to preach the truth.”1 She made it her life’s mission to do so.
Truth moved from New York to Northampton, Massachusetts in 1844, which was a “utopian community” and “a stop on the Underground Railroad.” She soon met fellow abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, and despite her inability to read or write, she was a very gifted speaker.2 More specifically, she pressured President Abraham Lincoln to allow African American men in the Union Army. After he finally did, she helped to recruit many of these men. She finally met President Lincoln in 1864 in Washington D.C. while working for the National Freedmen’s Relief Association. She rode streetcars in support of desegregation, advocated for land grants for formerly enslaved people, and even worked on President Ulysses S. Grant’s campaign for re-election. After this, she continued to speak on civil rights for the rest of her life, despite her declining health.3
Sojourner first spoke publicly on women’s rights at the first National Women’s Rights Convention in 1850 in Massachusetts. Only a year later in 1851, she gave her most famous speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention. It was originally untitled, but it was later coined “Ain’t I a Woman?” The speech itself included points mainly on women’s rights with intersecting points into abolition and civil rights. She continued to speak for women’s right to vote for the rest of her life. She also met with temperance and women’s rights activists, as at the time the two movements were intertwined, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
1Michaels, Debra. "Sojourner Truth." National Women's History Museum. 2015. Accessed November 29, 2024. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth
2Latimer, Catherine A. “SOJOURNER TRUTH.” Negro History Bulletin 5, no. 2 (1941): 26–26. Accessed November 29, 2024. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44246587.
3"Sojourner Truth." National Parks Service. May 20, 2022. Accessed November 29, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/people/sojourner-truth.htm
