Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Bomefree around 1797 and living until 26 November 1883, was an American abolitionist and activist for African American civil rights, women's rights and alcohol temperance. Born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, she escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826, and after taking her case to court in 1828 to recover her son she became the first Black woman known to win such a case against a white man. She took the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after becoming convinced that God had called her to leave the city and travel the countryside testifying to her faith, and her best known speech, delivered extemporaneously at the 1851 Ohio Women's Convention in Akron, became widely known during the Civil War under the title Ain't I a Woman, though the version published in 1863 rendered her words in a stereotypical Black dialect she did not actually speak, since Dutch was her first language. During the Civil War she helped recruit Black men into the Union Army, and afterward she worked unsuccessfully to secure federal land grants for formerly enslaved people, continuing to campaign for women and African Americans until her death. A memorial bust of Truth was unveiled in the United States Capitol in 2009, making her the first African American woman honored with a statue there.