Sojourner Truth

man

Aged unknown

Sojourner Truth (/soʊˈdʒɜːrnər, ˈsoʊdʒɜːrnər/; born Isabella Baumfree; c. 1797 – November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and a women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God had called her to leave the city and go into the countryside "testifying the hope that was in her." Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title "Ain't I a Woman?", a variation of the original speech re-written by someone else using a stereotypical Southern dialect, whereas Sojourner Truth was from New York and grew up speaking Dutch as her first language. During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for formerly enslaved people (summarized as the promise of "forty acres and a mule"). She continued to fight on behalf of women and African Americans until her death. As her biographer Nell Irvin Painter wrote, "At a time when most Americans thought of slaves as male and women as white, Truth embodied a fact that still bears repeating: Among the blacks are women; among the women, there are blacks." A memorial bust of Truth was unveiled in 2009 in Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. She is the first African American woman to have a statue in the Capitol building. In 2014, Truth was included in Smithsonian magazine's list of the "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time."

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Commemorated on 1 plaque

Hosanna Meeting House. Founded by free Blacks who had settled in this area, it was first known as the "African Meeting House." Formally organized in 1843 as an African Union Methodist Protestant church. A station stop on the Underground Railroad, its many visitors included Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.

Old US 1 (Baltimore Pike) near Ashmun Rd., N of Lincoln University campus, Lower Oxford Township, PA, United States where they visited