Photo: Randall Studio, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sojourner Truth was born Isabella around 1797 in the town of Esopus, Ulster County, enslaved by a Dutch-speaking family. Dutch was her first language. She was sold several times as a child.
New York passed a gradual emancipation law that would free her in 1827. Her enslaver, John Dumont, promised to release her a year early and then went back on his word.
Walking to freedom
In late 1826 Isabella walked away with her infant daughter and found refuge with the Van Wagenen family nearby, who bought her freedom for the remaining time.
When she learned her son Peter had been illegally sold to a man in Alabama, she went to court in Kingston. In 1828 she won, and Peter was returned. It was one of the first cases in which a Black woman won such a suit against a white man.
A new name
She moved to New York City and in 1843 took the name Sojourner Truth, traveling to preach and speak against slavery and for women’s rights. Her 1851 speech in Akron, Ohio, is remembered as “Ain’t I a Woman?”
A statue of her stands at the Walkway Over the Hudson in Highland, and the Sojourner Truth Ulster Landing Park in Saugerties honors her.
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