Few people in history have faced as many barriers to being heard as a Black, illiterate woman born into slavery. Yet Sojourner Truth climbed pulpits and platforms across the United States, preaching that in Christ there is no room for the dehumanization of others.
Born around 1797 in Ulster County, New York, she was given the name Isabella Baumfree. Dutch was her first language, and she was sold as a child, separated from her family, passing through different owners until she was purchased by John Dumont in 1810.
In 1826, seeing that her owner would not keep his promise of early emancipation, she fled with her young daughter Sophia. Two years later, she sued the buyer who had illegally sold her son Peter to Alabama and won, becoming the first Black woman to defeat a white man in an American court.
Around 1827, she had an experience she described as an encounter with Jesus, feeling surrounded by God’s presence everywhere. From then on, she sought shelter with Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen, a couple opposed to slavery who paid for her freedom ahead of the legal date, and she began reorganizing her life around her faith.
In the following years, she lived in New York and, working as a domestic servant, became involved with a religious group led by a self-proclaimed prophet named Matthias. When one of the group’s leaders died under suspicious circumstances, she was tried for involvement in the death, later being acquitted by the jury for lack of evidence. The episode reveals her vulnerability during a still uncertain phase of her spiritual search.
In 1843, she left the city and adopted the name Sojourner Truth, a pilgrim of the truth, becoming an itinerant preacher. During this phase, she came close to the Millerite movement, which predicted Christ’s return that same year. The prophecy did not come to pass, and she went on to live at the Northampton Association, a utopian community in Massachusetts. She dictated her autobiography, published in 1850, and spoke at the women’s rights convention in Akron in 1851, joining the fight against slavery with the defense of women.
During the Civil War, she helped recruit Black soldiers and supported freed refugees in Washington. After the conflict, she fought, without success, for land grants for former slaves. In 1865, she was assaulted by a conductor who tried to forcibly remove her from a Washington streetcar, injuring her arm. She sued the company and won, helping to enforce the law that already mandated the desegregation of the capital’s streetcars. She died in 1883 in Battle Creek, Michigan, at the age of 86.
Her story reminds us that the gospel, when taken seriously, does not separate personal conversion from the struggle for the dignity of one’s neighbor. Sojourner Truth united Christian identity and public commitment in a way that still challenges churches and missions to serve the most vulnerable.
