Showing results for "The Narrative of Sojourner Truth" in Politics & Activism

Sojourner Truth’s autobiographical narrative chronicles her life as a slave in Upstate New York and her transformation into an abolitionist, women’s rights activist, orator, and preacher. She was born around 1797 and emancipated by state law in 1827. The following year she moved to New York City, where she became involved with various unorthodox religious groups. By 1843 she had become an itinerant preacher and spent most of the next 13 years in Northampton, Massachusetts. She was illiterate; her autobiography was dictated to her neighbor Olive Gilbert.

A powerful document about slavery, emancipation, faith, and resilience, Narrative of Sojourner Truth chronicles the life of a nineteenth-century trailblazer in the battle for racial and gender equality. Beginning with her earliest reminiscences of her brutal childhood, Truth recounts the first thirty years of her life in bondage, including her marriage and her trials as a mother, and then describes her eventual liberation. At the heart of this extraordinary record is Truth’s spiritual epiphany.