November 18, 1797 - Sojourner Truth - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

Preacher Sojourner Truth is born. Isabella Baumfree was born into slavery on November 18, 1797 in New York state, one of 13 children. She was first sold for $100 and subsequently sold other times before getting freedom about the time slavery was abolished in New York in 1827. One of her children had been illegally sold to an owner in Alabama and with the help of a Quaker activist, she successfully sued for his return. In 1843, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth, saying, “The Spirit calls me, and I must go.” She joined abolitionist groups and began her travels, preaching for the end of slavery. In 1850 Truth’s friend Olive Gilbert secretly published the book The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave from the memoirs she had dictated to him. Truth also became a passionate advocate for the rights of women and blacks; audiences remembered the six-foot-tall woman’s strong voice, great intelligence and quick wit. On November 19, 1851, at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, she heard male ministers asserting men’s superiority over women. She walked to the front of the room and waited for some in the audience to stop hissing. When she spoke she commanded the attention of the whole room. She pointed out that as a black woman she couldn’t be equal if no one ever offered to lift her over ditches or help her from a carriage. “Ain’t I a woman?” she demanded – a phrase that gained instant fame. She was also quoted as saying, “If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it?” She continued to influence Americans until her death on November 26, 1883.

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