Sojourner Truth

Isabella Bomefree was born a slave in Ulster County, New York, in 1797. Her parents were James and Betsy, slaves of Colonel Hardenbergh. She was alive during the 1900's, a time where slavery and racism tainted the United States. Bomefree was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York and worked toward freedom the rest of her life. She spoke only Dutch until she was sold from her family around the age of eleven. Because of the cruel treatment she suffered at the hands of her master she learned to speak English quickly, but would continue to speak with a Dutch accent all her life. Truth was sold four times over her life and was passed from one cruel master to the next. At one farm, she fell in love with a man from another plantation named Robert. When the owners did not like the relationship, they took Robert and beat him to death. She never saw him again. Afterward, her owner forced Truth to marry an older slave named Thomas and they had five children. New York began, in 1799, to work on laws to abolish slavery but it wasn't completed and passed until 1827. That was after Truth had been a slave for thirty years. In 1826, Bomefree escaped her dictator with her infant daughter.

She was a strong supporter for woman's rights.

Bomefree changed her name to Sojourner Truth in 1843, as she planned to travel the land telling the truth. There she began to work with organizations designed to assist women. During the rest of her life she worked for the Northampton Association of Eduction and Industry. The organization supported womans rights and religious tolerance as well as pacifism. While there she worked with leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Ruggles. She spoke at the first woman's rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts with her speech "Ain't I a Woman".

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back."

During the Civil War, she helped escaped and freed slaves find housing and work. Truth was one of the main people operating the underground railroad that helped slaves move from the south to the free north. All the rest of her life she worked for the rights of woman, slaves, and religions. Truth made many friends among influential people and preached about a number of things such as abolition, women's rights, prison reform, and capital punishment. She lived long enough to see her people brought to freedom, but never stopped trying to win more equality for them. She died at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan, on Nov. 26, 1883. Sojourner Truth influenced many of the greatest minds of the time, and what she fought for is still being argued out today.

Sojorner Truth is the hero I chose because she never stopped pushing for more equality and fought for everything she believed in. She wasn't very educated and her speech showed it. But it was her message that stuck in people's minds not the way she talked. She helped people who couldn't help themselves and also saved many from a life of cruelty and mistreatment. Truth helped this country come a long way and truly lived up to her name. She spread the truth and ideas all throughout the US, whether they wanted to be heard or not.