Sojourner Truth, 1797–1883

Sojourner Truth, 1797–1883

Abolitionist and women's rights advocate

Sojourner Truth was born a slave named Isabella Baumfree in southeastern New York. After moving from owner to owner (many of them especially cruel) she ran away at 17 and took refuge with a Quaker couple. This couple ended up buying Sojourner’s freedom from her slave owner.

A few years later, Sojourner had a visitation from the Lord where "God revealed himself to her, with all the suddenness of a flash of lightning, showing her, 'in the twinkling of an eye, that he was all over,' that he pervaded the universe, 'and that there was no place where God was not.'…"Jesus loved me! I knowed it, I felt it.""

Sojourner desired a new identity in Christ so she asked God for a new name. God renamed her Sojourner "because I was to travel up an' down the land, showin' the people their sins, an' bein' a sign unto them." She then asked God for a second name, "'cause everybody else had two names; and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people."

Sojourner began preaching the gospel of freedom all over New England, contending for the rights of slaves and women. Through her life Sojourner always relied on the discipline of prayer to guide her. Having never learned to read, she asked people to read and re-read the Bible to her and empowered by the Word of God and her own prayer life, she fearlessly campaigned for the equal dignity and rights of all human beings.

"When I preaches," she said, "I has just one text to preach from, an' I always preaches from this one. My text is, 'When I found Jesus.' "

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