1. Sojourner Truth Christian Zotti Period 4

2. Early Life Sojourners native name was Isabella Baumfree and she was born in 1797 in rural New York She only spoke Dutch She was born into slavery and was separated from her family at nine years old As a young female slave she was physically and sexually assaulted by her masters She was sold many times to different owners and rarely stayed in one place for too long Eventually she was sold to the Dumont family in Ulster County New York For the first time she learned to speak English

3. Adult Life While on the Dumont property she fell in love with another slave from the next farm over named Robert Sojourner gave birth to their daughter Diana in 1815 The owner of Robert stopped them from seeing each other because their children would not be his property In 1817 Truth was then forced by her owner John Dumont to marry Thomas another slave on the plantation Sojourner had three more children with Thomas named Peter, Elizabeth, and Sophia

4. Fighting Back Dumont broke his promise to emancipate Truth in 1826 so she escaped with her daughter Sophia Her two other children were left behind All New York slaves were emancipated the following year on July 4, 1827 She heard her son Peter who was just five years old had been illegally sold to Alabama Sojourner took the case to court and won her son back from the Alabama owner Became the first black women to win a case against a white man

5. Rights Activist Sojourner began to dedicate her life to Methodist ways fighting slavery She joined many abolition groups including a group called the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in 1844 Not only supported abolition of slavery but also women's rights She lived in the self sufficient community for a while and met people such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and David Ruggles. She began to be a big influence as an activist and reformer Her memoirs were published as The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. In 1850 She became very popular and traveled the country with other abotionalists speaking of civil rights During the civil war she fought to give blacks their own land but was never able to get congress to approve

6. Women's Rights Truth spoke at the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1850 In1 851 At the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron she delivered a speech that became famous for the line “Ain't I a Woman?“ Truth wanted political equality for all women and also fought not only for the freedom of black men but also for black women She was worried that if only black men gained freedom that the Women both black and white would be lost for many years to come

7. Sojourner Truth’s Legacy Died in Battle Creek Michigan on November 26, 1883 Till her death she fought hard for civil rights and women's suffrage Truth was seen as one of the leaders in the reform community She was able to see the results of her hard work when slavery was abolished However her theory that women would not gain rights if only black men were given rights came true She did not live to see women’s suffrage “If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.”

8. Works Cited "Sojounrner Truth." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 01 Mar. 2014. "Sojourner Truth Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2014. United States. National Park Service. "Sojourner Truth." National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, 14 Feb. 2014. Web. 01 Mar. 2014.