Born enslaved in the Dutch-speaking Hudson Valley of New York, Isabella Baumfree walked away from bondage in 1826 and in 1828 won a lawsuit that returned her young son from illegal slavery in Alabama. Renaming herself Sojourner Truth in 1843, she became one of the best-known speakers of the antislavery and women’s rights movements, and her 1851 address in Akron, Ohio, remains a foundational text of American oratory — though the words most people know were published twelve years later by another writer.
At a Glance
- Born
- c. 1797 (exact date unknown), Ulster County, New York
- Died
- 26 November 1883, Battle Creek, Michigan
- Birth name
- Isabella Baumfree
- Known for
- Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850); speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, Akron (1851); 1828 lawsuit recovering her son Peter
- Fields
- Abolition · Religion · Civil Rights
- Era
- 19th Century
Early Life
Truth was born Isabella Baumfree around 1797 in Ulster County, New York, on an estate owned by Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh. Her parents, James and Elizabeth, were enslaved, and Dutch was her first language. She was sold several times as a child and, around 1810, came into the possession of John Dumont of New Paltz, where she remained for more than fifteen years.
At Dumont’s she married Thomas, another enslaved man, and bore several children. New York’s gradual emancipation law of 1817 set 4 July 1827 as the date of freedom for enslaved adults born before 1799. Dumont promised to free her a year early; when he broke that promise, she left in late 1826 with her infant daughter, Sophia. As she later put it, she did not run away but walked away by daylight. She took refuge with Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen, who paid Dumont for her remaining service, and she used their surname for some years.
Life and Work
Soon after her departure she learned that her five-year-old son, Peter, had been sold out of state and was enslaved in Alabama, in violation of a New York law that barred selling enslaved people beyond its borders. With help from local Quakers and two Kingston lawyers, she brought suit against Solomon Gedney, who had arranged the sale, and pressed the case until the boy was brought back to New York. The case, heard in Ulster County in 1828, ended with a ruling that Peter be returned to her. It is often cited as one of the first cases in which a Black woman successfully challenged a white man in an American court; the court records, long thought lost, were rediscovered in the New York State Archives in 2022.
In 1828 she moved to New York City and worked as a domestic servant, joining Methodist and later perfectionist religious circles, including the commune of the self-styled prophet Robert Matthews. On 1 June 1843 she took the name Sojourner Truth and set out as an itinerant preacher. The following year she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts, a cooperative community of abolitionists where she met William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Unable to read or write, she dictated her life story to Olive Gilbert, and Garrison printed the Narrative of Sojourner Truth in Boston in 1850; sales of the book, and later of photographic cartes de visite, supported her travels.
At the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron in late May 1851, Truth rose to speak on women’s strength and equal rights. The earliest full report, by the convention’s recording secretary, Marius Robinson, appeared in the Anti-Slavery Bugle of Salem, Ohio, on 21 June 1851. It is written in standard English and does not contain the phrase “Ain’t I a woman?” The familiar version was published in 1863 by Frances Dana Gage, who had presided over the convention. Gage’s account, written from memory twelve years later, rendered Truth’s words in a Southern plantation dialect she never spoke, added the famous refrain, and dramatized the audience’s hostility. Historians therefore treat Robinson’s report, which he reviewed with Truth before publication, as the closer record of what she actually said.
In 1857 Truth moved to Michigan, eventually settling in Battle Creek. During the Civil War she gathered supplies for Black troops and helped recruit soldiers in Michigan. On 29 October 1864 she met President Abraham Lincoln at the White House. She then worked with the National Freedman’s Relief Association at Freedman’s Village in Arlington, Virginia, helping formerly enslaved refugees find work, and in Washington she challenged streetcar conductors who tried to eject Black passengers. In the late 1860s and 1870s she petitioned Congress to grant western land to freedpeople, and in 1872 she tried to vote in Battle Creek and was turned away.
“I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man.”
Legacy
Truth died at her home in Battle Creek on 26 November 1883 and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery there. On 28 April 2009 a bronze bust of her by Artis Lane was unveiled in Emancipation Hall of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, the first sculpture in the Capitol honoring an African American woman.
Her public image was shaped from the start by white writers — Gilbert, Gage, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose 1863 Atlantic Monthly essay called her the “Libyan Sibyl.” Truth answered in part through photography: she copyrighted her portraits in her own name and sold them with the caption “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance.” Because nearly everything written about her in her lifetime passed through other hands, historians read those texts with care. Nell Irvin Painter’s 1996 biography separated the documented woman from the symbol, showing how the dialect speech became the standard text. Her insistence that abolition and women’s rights were a single cause continues to anchor scholarship on the intersection of race and gender in American reform.
Sojourner Truth insisted that abolition and women’s rights were one cause, yet her most famous words reached us through other people’s pens, so studying her means asking who records a speaker’s voice and how. Open the classroom lesson →
Key Dates
- c. 1797 Born Isabella Baumfree, enslaved, in Ulster County, New York.
- c. 1810 Sold to John Dumont of New Paltz, New York.
- Late 1826 Leaves Dumont with her infant daughter, Sophia.
- 4 July 1827 New York’s gradual emancipation law frees enslaved adults in the state.
- 1828 Wins a lawsuit in Ulster County returning her son Peter from slavery in Alabama.
- 1 June 1843 Takes the name Sojourner Truth and begins preaching.
- 1850 Narrative of Sojourner Truth, dictated to Olive Gilbert, published in Boston.
- May 1851 Speaks at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron.
- 29 October 1864 Meets President Abraham Lincoln at the White House.
- 26 November 1883 Dies at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Sources and Further Reading
- Sojourner Truth and Olive Gilbert, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave (Boston: Printed for the Author, 1850). Link
- Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996).
- National Park Service, “Ain’t I a Woman?” (Robinson and Gage texts compared). Link
- National Park Service, “Sojourner Truth.” Link
- Architect of the Capitol, “Sojourner Truth Bust.” Link
- National Women’s History Museum, “Sojourner Truth.” Link
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