Sojourner Truth

Life

Her birth name was Isabella Baumfree. She was born around 1797 in Ulster County, New York, the daughter of enslaved parents. Raised by owners of Dutch descent, she learned Dutch as her first language, and she never learned to read or write. In 1826 she left her owner's household, taking her infant daughter with her. She became legally free in 1827, when emancipation took effect in New York State.

About a month before she gained her freedom, she is said to have had a vision of Jesus. She afterward attended Methodist churches devoutly, and after moving to New York City she became a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion), a Black Methodist denomination. On Pentecost, June 1, 1843, believing that the Holy Spirit was calling her, she took the new name "Sojourner Truth," signifying that she would travel about like a sojourner, proclaiming the truth. She then became an itinerant preacher, speaking at outdoor meetings. For a time she also lived in the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a community that sought to overcome distinctions of class, race, and sex. She died on November 26, 1883, in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Ministry and Accomplishments

• Preaching and abolitionism: Through her preaching travels she came into contact with leaders of the abolitionist movement and gained a reputation as an antislavery speaker.
• Dictated autobiography: In 1850 The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, which Olive Gilbert recorded from her dictation, was published. She supported herself by selling copies of the book and photographs of herself on her speaking tours.
• Women's rights speech: Her extemporaneous speech at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, on May 29, 1851, is especially famous. Addressing the reality that Black women faced both racial and sex discrimination, the speech is known today by the title "Ain't I a Woman?"
• Aid to freed slaves: During the Civil War she collected food and clothing for Black Union regiments. She also met with President Abraham Lincoln concerning a refugee camp for freed slaves in Washington. In 1879, despite her advanced age, she helped freed slaves who had migrated to Kansas to settle there.

Influence on the Korean Church

No direct connection with the Korean church or specific influence on Korean church history is known. Her life does, however, touch on subjects on which Korean denominations hold differing positions, such as preaching by women and the relationship between faith and social engagement (see Ordination of Women and Church and Politics).

Assessment

Observers have noted that her human rights activism grew out of the religious work of itinerant preaching. Her biographer Nancy Koester regarded her not only as a reformer and preacher but also as a theologian. The Episcopal Church commemorates her on July 20 in its liturgical calendar.

The accuracy of the text of her most famous speech is disputed. Marius Robinson, the convention's secretary, published the speech in the Anti-Slavery Bugle in June 1851, and his record does not contain the phrase "Ain't I a woman?" That phrase comes from a version published in 1863 by Frances Gage, who had presided over the convention. Gage rendered the speech in a Southern Black dialect and added inaccurate details, such as the claim that nearly all of Truth's thirteen children had been sold away. In fact, she is understood to have had about five children, one of whom was sold.

She began her religious life as a Methodist. From 1857, however, she made her home in Harmonia, a Spiritualist community near Battle Creek. Spiritualism was a nineteenth-century religious movement based on the belief that the living can communicate with the dead. For this reason her faith is difficult to describe within the framework of a single denomination.