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Sojourner Truth

Written by Power to Change Ministries

Born in the Dutch settlement of Ulster County, Sojourner was named “Isabella” by her slave parents. She was sold for the first time at an auction when she was probably about nine years old. Isabella spoke Dutch as child and never learned to read and write. Though she learned to speak English later in life, she continued to speak with a Dutch accent.

Isabella suffered the many hardships and indignities of slavery, passing from master to master until the emancipation of slaves in New York State in 1828. Yet she was determined to leave the world a better place. She went on to devote her efforts, charismatic personality and public speaking prowess to a number of causes close to her heart including abolition, women’s suffrage and, later, the resettlement of freed Southern slaves.

Sojourner was an unusual woman for her time in many ways. She was nearly six-feet tall. She was outspoken and blunt. She believed and fought for the rights of the oppressed and the forgotten. She traveled as a preacher of God’s truth, speaking where and when she could about a faith which could not be shaken.

Though not everyone can identify with the life that she must have led as a slave or the life that she led after gaining her freedom, most of us can appreciate the strength required to do what she did. For Sojourner, this strength came from faith in Jesus Christ.

We can only imagine what she must have survived, but she left behind a legacy for all women - of courage, determination and unwavering faith.

“But I believe in the next world. When we get up yonder, we shall have all them rights ’stored to us again.” (Sojourner Truth, quoted in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, Oct. 1856)

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