I. Introduction- Basic Biographical Overview
Born in New York in 1797, with the birth name of Isabella Baumfree, Sojourner Truth was born into a large, impoverished slave family (Milestones 1). Truth and her family served a kind master until Truth was about nine years old. Unfortunately, Truth only spoke Dutch for the first part of her life, and was sold to English-speaking masters. This lead to her being branded as slow or lazy as her ownership changed hands and she learned the English language (Peterson 1). Sojourner escaped from slavery in 1826, with her an infant daughter, Sophia, in tow. Her son, Peter, was wrongly sold into slavery by a former master of hers, and she went to court to fight his capture. In 1828, she won the case, becoming the first black woman to win a case against a white man. (Ashley 2) Isabella’s name change to Sojourner Truth came as an
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She had to fight to make her voice heard, which she succeeded. She helped influence the feminist movement during her life, and beyond. Her infamous “Ain’t I A Woman” speech put into words what women had been crying out for men to understand for centuries in the U.S.: that what men could do, women were also capable of. Women did not need to be protected, that in contrast, Jesus, the savior of the Christian race, was born of a woman and God. Man, as Christians knew it, had nothing to do with that creation. She put voice to the idea that if women were so small a threat to the lives of men, the giving them the meager rights they were asking for couldn’t possibly endanger men’s rights, no matter the race. Another feminist issue that she tackled was the stereotype of the time of a woman being ‘manly’ if outspoken or intellectual. When confronted by a mob of jeering sexists proclaiming her to be a man for the way she spoke and thought, Sojourner bared her breast before the crowd to prove her