ïPARA âPAR@ ` TEXT ` ⌡Truth, Sojourner1797?╨1883abolitionistBorn a slave in Ulster County, New York, in the late 1790s, Sojourner Truth, the daughter of slaves, was given at birth the name Isabella. In 1827 she took the surname Van Wagener from a family that had taken her in after she had fled from the last of a series of masters who owned her prior to the passage of the New York Emancipation Act of 1827. Little is known of her early life other than her claim that, from childhood, she had conversed with God. One of her first acts as a free woman was to sue successfully for the return of a son who had been sold illegally to an Alabama slaveholder. She subsequently lived and worked as a servant in New York City, where she became active as an evangelist in association with Elijah Pierson, an evangelical zealot. Following the dissolution, amid a welter of court trials and popular scandal, of ╥Zion Hill,╙ a utopian community established in 1833 by Pierson and one Robert Matthews at Sing Sing, New York, Isabella lived quietly for some years. In 1843, however, the voices that followed her throughout life instructed her to adopt the new name Sojourner Truth and to take to the road as an itinerant preacher. She walked and preached through Long Island and Connecticut and by the end of the year had settled in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she first encountered and enthusiastically adopted the abolitionist cause. She became known throughout the state as a moving speaker on that topic and on that of women╒s rights, a movement she adopted at the Worcester, Massachusetts, convention in 1850. In that year she set out on a western tour; from headquarters in Ohio she made forays into Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas. With her deep voice and simple message of God╒s mystical love, Truth was an effective preacher in spite of her illiteracy. Her usual opening, ╥Children, I talk to God and God talks to me!,╙ had an electric effect on her audiences. She rivaled in eloquence the famed Frederick Douglass, with whom she frequently shared the platform. In their most famous encounter, when he urged a pre-Civil War black audience to seek justice in revolt, Truth broke the spell by asking, ╥Frederick, is God dead?╙ A large measure of her support came from widespread sales of The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 1850, written by Olive Gilbert and with a preface by William Lloyd Garrison. Another edition after the Civil War was prefaced by Harriet Beecher Stowe. At the outbreak of the Civil War she solicited supplies for black volunteer regiments. Her fame preceded her to Washington, where President Abraham Lincoln received her in the White House in October 1864. She then served about a year as a counselor for the National Freedmen╒s Relief Association. After the Civil War Truth continued to travel and lecture on women╒s rights and her idea for a western settlement for freedmen. In 1875 she retired to Battle Creek, Michigan, where she had settled her family 20 years before. She died on November 26, 1883, in Battle Creek, Michigan. Nstyl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ * !I ⌠ 5¬ ⌡ !I 5¬ !I ╛ 5¬ ┐ !I ∩ !I !I ô !I ▐ ¿ !I
