Her Narrative, first published in 1850, was dictated to and transcribed by her friend Olive Gilbert and contains a preface by William Lloyd Garrison. Truth delivered her “Ain’t I A Woman” speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron in 1851: “I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?” Truth, along with other Black women, adopted a scriptural defense of women’s rights. She attracted large audiences as a gospel singer and abolitionist preacher. In the 1850s, she became a charismatic Black spiritual leader and prominent spokeswoman for the rights of women. She was the first black woman to win a case against a white man. With their help, she escaped bondage in 1826 and sued successfully for the freedom of her son, Peter, who had been sold unlawfully to an Alabaman. Fearing sale to the South, Truth found refuge with a nearby abolitionist couple. Her parents were freed when whites who inherited her family would not support her father, who was too old to work. Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree into slavery in Ulster County, New York. Narrative of Sojourner Truth A Bondswoman of Olden Time “Yes, reader, if any one feels that the tocsin of alarm, or the anti-slavery trump, must sound a louder note before they can hear it, one would think they must be very hard of hearing – yea, that they belong to that class, of whom it may be truly said, ‘they have stopped their ears that they may not hear.”

The book of life sojourner truth