The Legacies of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth: Explore Their Great Achievements from Beginning to End by Ramos Adrian & Compacted History

Author:Ramos, Adrian & Compacted, History
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

Sojourner Truth

Exploring the Achievements of a Self-Emancipated Slave from Beginning to End

Introduction

Sometimes a person is remembered for being larger than life. Sometimes, “larger than life” does not begin to do that person justice. This might have been an apt description of the person who stood in front of a crowd at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, in May of 1851.

She stood nearly six feet tall and possessed the strong physique of a field laborer despite being in her fifties. Her voice was loud and powerful, whether she was singing hymns or delivering an improvised speech. Her skin was dark, and her body bore the scars and reminders of a former slave who had lived a hard life. Her audience was almost the complete opposite in every way, but they listened to her with rapt attention.

Here she was, far away from her home in Dutch-speaking Upstate New York. It seemed like it’s her family’s destiny to be here, considering how she and all of her dozen or more siblings were split up and sold away from their parents as children. She had been free from slavery for almost twenty-five years by then. She had freed herself, not by fighting or hiding, but by calmly and casually walking away one day.

She had wandered far and done many things. She yelled at God so he would hear her up in the sky. She took a white man to court and won her son’s freedom from him at a time when black women were barely respected as humans. She labored on farms and in cities and refused any more than bare minimum wages. She rubbed shoulders with religious revolutionaries and even joined a cult once—by accident.

All of these inspired a desire to go wandering even more. At an age when most people started to slow down, she instead sped up. She had seen the poverty and injustice of the world first-hand and wanted to do something about it. In a moment of divine revelation, she gave up her old name and took a new one that was extremely apt.

Sojourner Truth, as she became known, spoke her truth on a years-long sojourn across the United States. Every step of the way, she inspired awe, faced down violent mobs, and debated with statesmen and theologians. She spoke out in favor of civil rights, women’s rights, and a half-dozen other causes she believed in.

She concluded her speech that day to cheer and applause, and went on to continue her work elsewhere—there was still so much left undone, after all. She didn’t realize it would become her most famous speech ever. She didn’t realize that people would debate the exact contents and wording of her speech for years, adding to her image as a living legend.

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