Sermon preached by Rev. Lillie Mae Henley 26 Nov 2005
Thanksgiving is for gratitude and we are grateful for Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree.
She was born in 1979 on a New York farm in Ulster County into a Dutch-speaking home. Her parents, Elizabeth and James Baumfree, were slaves, and all thirteen of their children were born into slavery.
Biographers tell us that Isabella’s mother taught her three important lessons:
Always tell the truth
Believe in God
Ask God for help when you are in trouble
In an environment where slaves lied as a matter of course, usually to keep from being punished in a senseless and accusatory environment, Elizabeth taught Sojourner that no matter the consequences, truth is always better than a lie.
In a world gone mad, where people owned other people, and where it seemed God might have abandoned them all, Elizabeth taught Sojourner that God lives in the sky and when you are beaten or fall into trouble, you must ask Him and He will always hear and help you. This created a deep belief in a personal relationship with God for Sojourner.
When Isabella was eleven, the Dutch master who owned her died and she was sold, along with a herd of sheep, for $100. The family who brought her was an English-speaking family and Isabella was beaten because she couldn’t understand her duties. She was forced to learn English to avoid harsh and cruel punishment.
Her father came to see her one time, and she begged him to help her find a better place. Shortly thereafter, she was sold to a tavern owner, and while the environment was crude, it was no longer cruel.
After less than two years as a slave in the tavern, she was sold to a local farmer, John Dumont. His wife was especially cruel and harsh. Isabella never talked about it. Biographers believe it must have been particularly cruel and tragic for Sojourner never to have told what kind of punishment it was.
It was here, when Isabella was eighteen, that she fell in love with a slave from a neighboring farm. When they were discovered, the slave Robert was forbidden to see her again, his owner not wanting his slave to have children he could not own.
Robert went to see Isabella, anyway, and was followed by the owner and his son. They beat Robert savagely and unmercifully. Robert never returned. Isabella had a daughter Diana by Robert.
After this, Dumont forced Isabella to marry an older slave, Thomas, and they had four children: Peter, James, who died as an infant, Elizabeth, and Sophia.
New York had passed an emancipation law in 1799, and all slaves were to be freed by July 4, 1827. Dumont had promised Isabella that he would free her early, in 1826; but he reneged on his promise, telling her that a hand injury kept her from being as productive as she should be, and she had to stay until emancipation day.
This is when Isabella decided to free herself. She spun 100 pounds of wool, and left in the pre-dawn hours with her youngest daughter Sophia. One biographer quoted her as saying, “I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believe that be all right.”
It was at this time when Isabella changed her name to Sojourner Truth, believing that God wanted her to travel “up an’ down the land, showin’ the people their sins” and declaring the truth about the evils of slavery.
It was Sojourner Truth who wandered upon the farm of Isaac and Maria Van Wagener, a family of Quakers. Soon after she arrived, Dumont found her, insisting that she return to his farm. The Van Wageners offered to buy her services for the remainder of the year—until emancipation day—and Dumont accepted $20 for her. Isaac and Maria would not allow Sojourner to call them “master” and “mistress.” Instead, they insisted she call them by their given names. It is from the Van Wageners she learned about her rights as a citizen, as well as about fairness and the law. It was the Quakers’ influence that gave her the knowledge and the courage to go to court to retrieve her young son Peter. Dumont had leased the seven-year-old boy to another slave owner, and he had illegally sold him to a slaveholder in Alabama. After months of legal proceedings, Peter was returned to her scarred and abused.
It was while she lived with the Quakers that she had a life-changing experience—becoming “overwhelmed with the greatness of the Divine presence,” and was inspired to preach. In her late twenties she became a devout Methodist, and left the Van Wageners to join a Christian religious cult. By 1834 she had left the cult and was wandering and preaching throughout New York and New England.
By 1840, Truth had become a powerful speaker against slavery, moving her audiences to tears and horror at the firsthand accounts of slavery. She would tell listeners of how slaves were beaten, sometimes with spiked sticks and chains. She herself, as a teenager, had cruel masters. Once, her master, for no reason, had taken her to the barn, tied her up by her wrists, tore the back of her shirt off, and beat her until she bled. She described how she refused to give him the satisfaction of screaming, by clenching her fists so hard her fingernails drew blood from her palms. She also shared with her audiences how some slaves were forced to endure crowded cabins with no privacy, overwork, scraps for food, and threadbare clothes.
One biographer wrote, she wandered about in “relative obscurity, depending on the kindness of strangers” preaching and telling her slave stories.
In 1844 she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, founded by abolitionists to promote cooperative and productive labor. They were anti-slavery, religiously tolerant, women’s rights supporters, and pacifist in principle. It was here Sojourner met William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and other famous abolitionists. When the commune failed, she went to live with one of its founders who owned a cotton mill.
In 1846 Sojourner began to dictate her memoirs to Olive Gilbert, a member of the Northampton Association. The Memoirs of Sojourner Truth: A Slave Narrative was published privately by William Lloyd Garrison in 1850. When the cotton mill folded that year, Truth had enough money to buy a home in Northampton for $300.
It was in 1854, at the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, that Sojourner gave her “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. Abolitionist Frances Gage had the foresight to record Sojourner’s words.
Many of the participants did not want her to speak, afraid because she was a woman of color and she was an abolitionist, that their “cause” would be confused. Nevertheless, the astute and wise president of the convention France Gage insisted on Truth speaking. Afterwards, Gage wrote, “She had taken us up in her strong arms and carried us safely over the sough of difficulty turning the whole tide in our favor. I have never in my life seen anything like the magical influence that subdued the mob’s spirit of the [crowd] and turned the sneers and jeers … into notes of respect and admiration. Hundreds rushed up to shake hands with her and congratulate …” her.
She continued to travel and speak out against slavery and for women’s rights.
In 1857 she sold her home in Northampton and bought a home in Michigan, just west of Battle Creek. Her influence covered New England, the mid-Atlantic states, and now the Midwest.
When the Civil War started, she gathered supplies for black volunteer regiments and spoke out on behalf of the Union. By 1864 she was working among freed slaves at a government refugee camp on an island in Virginia. She was also employed by the National Freedman’s Relief Association in Washington DC. In honor of her work during the war, President Lincoln invited her to the White House. Truth continued to work for the Freedman’s Association after the war.
In 1867 she moved into Battle Creek, converting a barn into a house, all the while “soliciting” –there was no lobbying in those days, the federal government to provide land out west for former slaves. She pursued this for seven more years with little success.
Sojourner continued to travel and speak, touring with her grandson who became her constant traveling companion.
In 1874 she developed ulcers on her leg and stopped touring just long enough to heal. Then she returned to her travels.
In 1879 she spent a year in Kansas helping freed slaves settle.
In 1883 her leg ulcers were worse, and she was treated by the famous John Harvey Kellogg in Battle Creek. It was rumored that the great doctor grafted his own skin onto her leg.
That year 1883, at eight-six years, she died in her own home in Battle Creek surrounded by two of her daughters and their families.
Thanksgiving is for gratitude and this nation has to be grateful for Sojourner Truth, a prophetic, brave, courageous, and insightful woman of her time.
In the April 1863 in the Atlantic Monthly the celebrated abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote what is now a very famous piece titled “Sojourner Truth, The Libyan Sibyl.” It reflects the popularity and renown of Truth. The article is easily found on the web and I recommend it to you. While it gives what some scholars say, “a romanticized image” of Sojourner, it also gives a clear image of what she was like.
If you or I had been born an Isabella Baumfree, if you are I had been born in 1797, if you or I had been a slave, how would our biography read?
We were not, we are living now? When we die, how will our biography read?
Can we say we have wandered and traveled speaking the truth? Can we say we have spoken out? Made a difference in the world?
If we learn anything from this courageous, brave woman, let it be that we, too, are called to make a difference. By God, we can. By God, let it be so.