Sojourner Truth, legal name Isabella Van Wagener, (1797â1883), was an African American evangelist and reformer who applied her religious fervor to the abolitionist and womenâs rights movements.
She was the daughter of slaves and spent her childhood as an abused chattel of several masters. Since childhood Isabella had had visions and heard voices, which she attributed to God. In New York City she became associated with Elijah Pierson, a zealous missionary. Working and preaching in the streets, she joined his Retrenchment Society and eventually his household.
In 1850 she traveled throughout the Midwest, where her reputation for personal magnetism preceded her and drew heavy crowds. She supported herself by selling copies of her book, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, which she had dictated to Olive Gilbert.
Encountering the womenâs rights movement in the early 1850s, and encouraged by other women leaders, notably Lucretia Mott, she continued to appear before suffrage gatherings for the rest of her life.
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