Sojourner Truth, born into slavery as Isabella in Ulster County, New York, many citing January 30 as one of her birth dates, around 1797, was an African American evangelist and reformer. She devoted herself to abolitionism and women’s rights movements with religious zeal.
Isabella was the daughter of enslaved people and spent her childhood as an abused chattel of several masters. Her first language was Dutch. Between 1810 and 1827 she bore at least five children to an enslaved man named Thomas. Just before New York state abolished slavery in 1827, she found refuge with Isaac Van Wagener, who manumitted her. With the help of Quaker friends, she waged a court battle in which she recovered her small son, who had been sold illegally into slavery in the South. About 1829 she went to New York City with her two youngest children, supporting herself through domestic employment.
Truth began preaching in New York City. Since childhood Isabella had had visions and heard voices, which she attributed to God. In New York City she became associated with Elijah Pierson, a zealous missionary. Working and preaching in the streets, she joined his Retrenchment Society and eventually his household. In 1843, Isabella adopted the name Sojourner Truth. Obeying a supernatural call to “travel up and down the land,” she sang, preached, and debated at camp meetings, in churches, and on village streets, exhorting her listeners to accept the biblical message of God’s goodness and the brotherhood of man.