GospelCity Black History Month Salute - Profiles in Courage and Influence

Few individuals have been empowered to affect change for Africans of the Diaspora as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Marcus Garvey. Each in their own ways used their God-given influence to fight slavery and its vestiges. In the annals of history, Truth, Tubman, Douglass and Garvey leave a legacy that is as relevant today as it was during their times on earth. In celebration of that history, which extends beyond the month of February, we profile them and honor them for their unique contributions.

Sojourner Truth
“Ain’t I a woman?”

Born Isabella Baumfree, Sojourner Truth was an anomaly: A tall (over six feet) woman weathered from years of labor as a slave yet one of the most stunning and striking, articulate women with an intellect that far exceeded and belied her circumstances and the expectations set upon her by her masters and the conventions of the times. Sojourner knew she was an anomaly and had endured the savage beating and mysterious disappearance of her husband to literally walk towards freedom; wandering until she found it.

With a spirit and drive to survive, on June 1, 1843 Isabella answered a call to become a traveling preacher and changed her name to appropriately, Sojourner Truth.

Imagine being the lone black face in an assembly of white women advocating women’s rights, as Sojourner did in 1854 in Akron, Ohio. Imagine being patronized and treated like a sideshow and you will imagine how Sojourner Truth felt as she delivered her most famous and poignant speech, “Ain’t I a Woman.”

She said, “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 ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place, and ain't I a woman? ... I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me -- and ain't I a woman? … I have borne thirteen children and seen most all sold off to slavery and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me -- and ain’t I woman?”

Living up to her name, she would travel internationally meeting kings, presidents and other leaders in her travels to preach a gospel and Jesus of justice. Her final journey led her to walk back home to Michigan, to a daughter’s home, where she died on November 26, 1883.