Black History Month: Sojourner Truth
February 23, 2018
Gender has no reason to hold anyone back from what they are trying to achieve. An abolitionist, a women’s rights activist, a slave, and a mother, Isabella Baumfree, better known as Sojourner Truth was first sold into slavery at the age of nine along with a flock of sheep. After her harsh treatment from her slave owner, she was sold twice more until she ended up in New York where she then learned to speak English.
Truth ended up having a total of four children while she was enslaved. Her first daughter was created out of a forbidden love that she was then separated from and never saw again, Eventually, she escaped from slavery but was only able to bring her youngest of the four with her and left the rest behind. A while after her escape, she became the first African American woman to that successfully challenged a white man in the U.S. court system when she found out her son was illegally sold to a slave owner in Alabama.
In Truth’s starting years of freedom, she worked odd jobs as a housekeeper until she eventually began to be recognized for her growing passion for equality for black and women. Her speech “Ain’t I A Woman” from the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts turned heads as the antislavery agenda started to grow in the United States. She, along with other abolitionists, continued to fight for the freedom on all slaves in the United States and Truth personally focused a lot of her time on Black Women to gain equality since she believed that they were often left out of the equation.
Sojourner Truth. 1797–November 26, 1883. While it was a temporary stay, she was a woman who thought that talk was cheap and actions spoke louder than words. Instead of sitting around wishing and hoping things would get better, she got out and tried to make things happen for herself, her family, and other blacks and women in the United States. Hard times constantly stood in her way, but she knew what she wanted, so instead of giving up, she fought.
“If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.” -Sojourner Truth
We’ll be in touch.
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