She was born into slavery in Ulster County, New York, around 1797, and named Isabella. Her enslaver promised to free her a year before New York's emancipation law took effect, then broke his word. So she walked away to freedom by daylight, carrying her baby daughter.
Then she learned that her five-year-old son, Peter, had been sold illegally out of New York to a man in Alabama. New York law banned selling enslaved people out of the state. Isabella took the case to court. In 1828, she won, and Peter was brought home to her. The court papers from the case were rediscovered in the New York State Archives only a few years ago.
In 1843, she gave herself a new name: Sojourner Truth. She travelled widely, preaching and speaking out against slavery and for women's rights.
In 1851, she spoke at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio. The famous version of that speech, with the line "Ain't I a Woman?", was first published by Frances Gage in 1863, twelve years later. A report printed a month after the speech does not contain that phrase at all, so the most quoted words may not be hers.
She paid for her work by selling photographs of herself, printed with the words "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance." In 1864, she met President Abraham Lincoln. She died in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1883.
Born enslaved. She walked away, went to court, and won.
