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Isabella Hardenbergh, who later took the name Sojourner Truth, was born a slave in 1797. Her mother was called Mau-Mau Bett and her father was called Baumfree. She and her family worked for the Hardenberghs on their farm. As Isabella grew from a baby to a toddler to a small child and started working, the Hardenberghs found her to be very stubborn and hard to work with. When Isabella turned nine, her mistress took her to town to auction her off. Standing on the platform, Isabella tried to look as dumb and stubborn as she could. The mistress had to promise a flock of sheep to the buyer before a man named John Neely finally bought her for $100. John Neely treated her very cruelly. He did not know that she could only speak Dutch. When he gave his orders in English and she didn't understand, he whipped her and beat her. Gradually she learned English and could follow orders properly, and John Neely saw how smart and strong she was. Isabella's mother raised her to be very religious. She loved her mother and father. It killed her to be away from them when she went to Neely's. She got to visit them only three times before her mother died from leg ulcers and her father died after her. Bella lost both her parents at age ten. Neely sold her at age eleven to a fisherman named Martin Schryver. Schryver treated Bella a lot better, but kept her for only two years before trading her away to a man who offered 300 dollars for her. John Dumont had Bella working in the kitchens. She was a very good cook. She was 13 when she came to the Dumont's farm. When she was 17 she was forced to marry Thomas, another slave of Dumont's. She gave birth to a daughter, Diana, the next year. After Diana she had Peter, Elizabeth, and Sophia. In 1818, the New York state legislature decided to free all slaves in New York on July 4, 1827. But that didn't affect when Bella would be set free. There was a law already that let females slaves free when they turned 28 and male slaves when they were 25. So in 1826, Isabella left the farm and moved to a town nearby. She got enough money for food and shelter by working as a housemaid. Then, the year New York slaved were to be freed, she encountered a problem. The Dumonts had still had her son Peter. Since they didn't want to just let him go when July 4th came, they illegally traded him out of state so they would get money from the buyer, and the Dumonts profited. Bella did not let them get away with that. The Dumonts had done something against the law. She hired the lawyer and sued the family. At the trial, Peter was brought in. He was beaten up, and when the judge asked him what the gashes and bruises were from, he started crying. The judge took him out of the room and talked with him privately. When they came back in, the judge said that Isabella should take him. A few years after that victory, she moved to New York City. She thought the city was like Sodom, a city in the bible that was destroyed by God because it was full of bad people. She gladly moved to Sing Sing, New York to join a utopian society called The Kingdom. Everyone in the society was talking about peace and equality between whites and blacks, but they didn't really do anything about it. Bella was disappointed. Elijah Pierson was the leader of The Kingdom. One day he died. A white family blamed her for his death, and also accused her of trying to poison them. Again, Bella hired a lawyer, sued the family, and won. Her son, Peter, found work on a whaling ship called The Zone. Bella was happy for him. Peter had been quite a hoodlum in the city, and she was glad to see him earning money in an honest way. He liked it, too. Then, two years later, Bella got word that he had died at sea. In the summer of 1843, when she was 46, she was praying as usual, then she got the idea to change her name. She did not want to keep the name of a slave. So she asked God for a name during the prayer, and he gave her Sojourner because she would journey around and give lectures. Then, since slaves take the last name of their master, she decided her last name was Truth, because God was sometimes galled Truth. From then on, she was Sojourner Truth. She went to many conventions and abolitionist meetings and made lectures. People liked going to lectures because it was cheap to go to and it was a chance for people to get together with friends. She was an extremely talented public speaker, but she irritated many people. At a meeting in Ohio, when Sojourner was talking, a man shouted out that he didn't care what she said about slavery and freedom any more than the bite of a flea. "Perhaps not," Sojourner said, "but the Lord willing, I'll keep you scratching." As she toured around the north and met different audiences, she notices another problem much like slavery. She realized how little power women had. She started to not only lecture about God and slavery, but also about women's rights. She found that most people were much willing to discuss slavery and how to stop it, but when the topic came around to women's rights, men shook their heads. One man spoke out at the Women's Rights Convention in 1851, saying that women were weak and that was why they didn't deserve those rights. There, Sojourner stood up, walked to the podium and gave her most memorable speech. "Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter, I think between the Negroes of the South and the women of the North -- all talking about rights -- the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this talking about? "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm. I have plowed, I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain't I a woman? I could work as much, and eat as much as man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of them sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman? "He talks about this thing in the head. What's that they call it?" "Intellect," whispered a woman nearby. "That's it, honey. What's intellect got to do with women's rights or black folks' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full? "That little man in black there! He says women can't have as much rights as men. 'Cause Christ wasn't a woman.' Where did your Christ come from? From God and a Woman! Man had nothing to do with him! If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side up again. And now that they are asking to do it, the men better let them." The whole convention was cheering. Although she could not read or write, she made up for it in her brilliant talent of public speaking. Still, Olive Gilbert convinced her that she needed an autobiography. She dictated her autobiography to Gilbert and it was published in 1850 as The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. The book sold well, but she didn't get the money directly, so she was forced to sell photographs of herself to raise money. People bought her photographs because she looked interesting. She was very old. She wore a simple black dress with a white shawl and a white turban. She was over six feet tall and she was buff. People wondered if she was really a woman or a man. They had to get the photographs to inspect her to make sure. On April 12, 1861, the Civil War started. Truth was 64, and she was feeling old. The war made her more determined about her lectures, but the audience was a lot ruder and had less tolerance for her talk about God and slaves' and women's rights. In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed all the slaves in the south. A year later, she went to the white house to meet Abraham Lincoln. She said he was the politest and most gracious person she had ever met. When the Civil war ended, Sojourner went to live in Washington DC to work at the freedmen's hospital for a short time. After that she began touring and lecturing again. That year, the 15th amendment was passed. That amendment to the Constitution allowed blacks to vote. Sojourner kept going to women's rights conventions. In 1871, Nannette Gardener put in the first female vote, even though it was still not allowed. In 1875, the third edition of Sojourner Truth's Narrative was published along with The Book of Life that had articles and letters about her. Her books sold well. People were curious about her. A she went on tours, she had people traveling with her. Sammy Banks, Sojourner's grandson, was one of them, and he died in 1875. She had been very close to him, so this came as a terrible blow. She became sick with leg ulcers not long after that incident. Her doctor gave her medicine to help her ulcers. Sojourner took the medicine, but since she didn't feel much, better, she decided it wasn't strong enough. She found the same kind of medicine, but for horses, and took the horse medicine. Unfortunately, that made her condition worse. She did not regain her strength until the next year. When she got better, she went touring again. In 1883, Sojourner was 86 years old, and she was sick again. She was back at her house in Battle Creek, Michigan. Her daughters Diana and Elizabeth were there, taking care of her. They witnessed her death in November. Sojourner Truth was known as one of the boldest, bravest, and most intelligent abolitionist of her time. She stirred many people to indignation about slavery and the denial of rights to women, and she devoted her life to these causes. She lived a long life -- it seems as if her strong determination had kept her alive for so long. |