WHO WAS SOJOURNER TRUTH

Sojourner Truth was born in 1797 to enslaved parents James and Elizabeth
Baumfree in Ulster County, New York. Around the age of nine, she was
sold at an auction to John Neely for $100, along with a flock of sheep.

Neely was a cruel and violent master who beat the young girl regularly. She
was sold two more times by the age 13 and ultimately ended up at the
West Park, New York, home of John Dumont and his second wife
Elizabeth. She eventually bore five children.

At the turn of the 19th century, New York started legislating emancipation,
but it would take over two decades for liberation to come for all enslaved
people in the state.

In 1851, Truth began a lecture tour that included a women's rights

conference in Akron, Ohio, where she delivered her famous "Ain't I a
Woman?" speech. In it, she challenged prevailing notions of racial and
gender inferiority, inequality and female status.

During the 1850’s, She continued speaking nationally and helped slaves
escape to freedom. When the Civil War started, Truth urged young men to
join the Union cause and organized supplies for black troops. After the war,
she was honored with an invitation to the White House and became
involved with the Freedmen’s Bureau, helping freed slaves find jobs and
build new lives. In the late 1860s, she collected thousands of signatures on
a petition to provide former slaves with land, though Congress never took
action. Nearly blind and deaf towards the end of her life, Truth spent her
final years in Michigan.