Sojourner Truth

Isabella Baumfree

Lived

c. 1797–1883

Era

Modern

Where

New York and Michigan

Tradition

Methodist / Wesleyan

Preaching abolition and women's rights on the same platform

Born into slavery in Dutch-speaking New York, she walked away with her infant daughter in 1826, shortly before state emancipation, and sued successfully in court to recover her son who had been sold illegally into Alabama — one of the first such cases won by a Black woman against a white man.

Why it matters

She took the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 and travelled preaching, joining abolition and women's rights to each other at a time when most campaigners in each cause wanted them kept apart. She could not read or write and dictated her narrative. She recruited Black troops during the Civil War and met Lincoln. The speech she is known for was reconstructed by someone else twelve years afterwards, in a dialect she did not speak.

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.