It
is rarely discussed, but Sojourner Truth fought for the desegregation of
public transportation in Washington, DC during the Civil War. She refused
to face the indignities of Jim Crow segregation on street cars and had
the Jim Crow car removed from the Washington D. C. system. Sojourner Truth
brought a local street to a standstill when a driver refused her passage.
With the support of the crowd she forced the driver to carry her. During
her legendary life, she challenged injustice wherever she saw it. She was
an abolitionist, women's rights activist and preacher. Born into slavery
(as Isabella Baumfree) in upstate New York, Sojourner Truth obtained her
freedom and moved to New York City. There she began to work with organizations
designed to assist women. She later became a traveling preacher and quickly
developed a reputation as a powerful speaker. A turning point in her life
occurred when she visited the Northhampton Association in Massachusetts.
The members of this association included many of the leading abolitionists
and women's rights activists of her time. Among these people Sojourner
Truth discussed issues of the day and as a result of these discussions
became one of the first people in the country to link the oppression of
black slaves with the oppression of women.
As
a speaker, Sojourner Truth became known for her quick wit and powerful
presence. She would never be
intimidated. Because of her powerful speaking ability, independent spirit
and her six foot frame, she was often accused of being a man. She
ended that in Silver Lake, Indiana when she exposed her breast to the audience
that accused her. Sojourner Truth lived a long and productive
life. She spoke before Congress and two presidents. Sojourner Truth is
best remembered for a speech she gave at a women's rights conference where
she noticed that no one was addressing the rights of Black women. Her address
reads in part: "Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped over
carriages, and lifted ober dicthes and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober muddpuddles, or
bigs me any best place. And ain't I a woman? Look at me Looka at me arm.
I have ploughes and planted and gathered into barns, and no mand could
head me! And ain't I a woman."
Born
Isabella Baumfree, Sojourner Truth was one of the earliest and most passionate
of female abolitionists-for she herself had once been a slave. In the 1820s,
when still quite a young woman, she escaped from her New York owner after
being brutally treated and sold away from her family. By the 1840s, Truth
had become a powerful speaker against slavery, often moving her audiences
to tears and exclamations of horror with her firsthand accounts of what
many of her black brethren and sisters were enduring at the hands of cruel
masters. She would tell listeners of how some slaves were kept cowed and
afraid to act by beatings, sometimes with spiked sticks and chains; she
herself, as a teenager, had been taken into the barn by her master one
afternoon for absolutely no reason and tied up by the wrists. Then he tore
the shirt from her back and whipped her with a bundle of sticks until her
back bled. In a voice contemporaries described as rich and deep, she described
how she refused to give him the satisfaction of screaming, by clenching
her fists so hard her fingernails drew blood from her palms.
She also spoke of the living conditions many slaves were forced to endure,
crowded together into cabins with no privacy, overworked, fed scraps in
many cases, and clothed in threadbare hand-me-downs. Her audiences must
have felt the shame as Truth recalled the auction block, upon which men
and women alike were frequently forced to strip and stand before potential
buyers, who would search their bodies for marks of the whip or of wrist
or leg irons, the presence of which would indicate the slave had been frequently
punished. The slaves would be forced to endure impersonal and degrading
inspections of their teeth, muscles, and other body parts, depending on
what the buyer was looking for in the purchase. Truth was self-educated,
and much of her speaking bore the stamp of a deep love of and acquaintance
with Scripture. When explaining to Harriet Beecher Stowe how she came to
change her name, Truth said she felt God had called her "to travel up and
down the land, showing the people their sins and being a sign unto them."
She also possessed a quick wit, coupled with an ability to think fast and
turn the unkind words of others against them. Facing a heckler once who
told her he did not care for her anti-slavery talk anymore than he would
for the bite of a flea, Truth retorted, "Perhaps not, but Lord willing
I'll keep you scratching."
She
was very involved in political causes, and strongly supported suffrage.
During the Civil War, she gathered supplies for black volunteer regiments,
and, in tribute to her efforts, was received at the White House by President
Lincoln in 1864. Truth was appointed to the National Freedman's Relief
Association in 1864, where she worked diligently to better conditions for
African-Americans. She lived long enough to see her people brought to freedom,
but never stopped in her efforts to win more equality for them. Right up
until her death, in Battle Creek, Michigan, she continued to speak out
for her race; when she died in 1883, she went to her grave a much lamented
and beloved figure in abolitionist lore.
Black
Histroy: Sojourner Truth
