Skip to main content

Sojourner Truth

When taking a look at the anti-slavery vs. pro-slavery argument, I did some research on Sojourner Truth. Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree, was a slave who was bought and sold around four times. She was living in cruel conditions and grew up at the hands of a violent and abusive slave owner. She eventually fled her owners with her infant daughter and landed with an abolitionist family, the Van Wagenens. They bought Truth's freedom for twenty dollars, which today would've been around six hundred dollars. She eventually moved to New York where she worked with a minister and became more invested with religion. This is probably why religion was often her base argument when discussing matters of women’s rights and slavery. She went on to be one of the most well known abolitionists and women's rights activists. 

Something Truth is well known for is her speech that she gave at the Ohio Women's Right's Convention in 1851, "Ain't I a Woman?". Throughout this speech, she repeats the phrase "ain't I a woman?" to emphasize the need to create equality for African American women. When the Civil War broke out, Truth heavily encouraged black men to enlist. Right after the war, she was awarded with an invitation to the White House and became involved with the Freedmen's Bureau, an organization that helps freed slaves find jobs and build new lives for themselves. Truth was also the first black woman to ever sue a white man AND win. My favorite quote from Truth is, “Children, who made your skin white? Was it not God? Who made mine black? Was it not the same God? Am I to blame, therefore, because my skin is black?... Does not God love colored children as well as white children? And do not the same savior die to save the one as well as the other?". 

Sojourner Truth was one of the strongest women of her time, and her message will continue to be heard throughout the world. With the current events happening in America today, I think we can all learn a little something from Sojourner. 


Sojourner Truth

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Glory

A few days ago in my seminar class, we watched a movie called "Glory". "Glory" depicts the story of the 54th Infantry Regiment in Massachusetts during the American Civil War. It shows the difficult and at times, uncomfortable story of the transition from slave to soldier. The men may have freed themselves from slavery, but they have yet to be free from the stigma that slavery created around them.  This movie was packed with tons of significant moments but I think my favorite was when Robert Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick) decided to take matters into his own hands when acquiring supplies for his soldiers. The men were denied basic attire like socks, shoes, and military uniforms due to the racial discrimination that they were still facing. Shaw wouldn't stand for it anymore and went to talk to the man in charge of attire. I think this is a great representation of what white people need to be doing in America right now. They need to use their privilege to upli...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Thoughts on Gone With the Wind

I recently watched the movie "Gone With the Wind" in my seminar class: here are my thoughts. I mainly want to focus on one thing: the representation of African Americans in the film. Specifically focusing in on the characters Mammy and Prissy.  The two main black characters in the film are Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel, and Prissy, played by Butterfly McQueen. This movie portrays the complicated dynamics and stereotypical box black women are put in. For one, I loved seeing the relationship between Scarlett and Mammy. We can see throughout the film that Mammy is the one who basically raises Scarlett. She cooks her meals, is always making sure she eats, she helps her get dressed, makes sure she's on time, and so on and so forth. One might think that this makes Mammy look submissive to Scarlett, and literally, she IS. But when we dive deeper into Mammy's attitude and personality, she is exactly the opposite. Through her interactions with Scarlett, we see Mammy being a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Jim Crow Era and Brown v. The Board

Today in seminar I learned about two things: Brown v. Board and the Jim Crow Era. It was weird to learn about some of these things, because they seem so inhumane and so outdated. But the truth is that some of these things are still very much present in this country, such as blackface, a rising topic in media and entertainment, and lynchings, something that is still happening today in the midst of the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.  Lynchings started occurring in the late 1870's and continued to occur for almost a hundred years. It was used as a form of punishment for black people who committed any type of social aggression, ranging from an accusation of a crime to something as small as bumping into a white woman, and the accuses weren't even given due process. Because white people didn't feel as if the law was working, they took the law into their own hands. The people that were responsible for these crimes were never charged or arrested. There was a total of abou...
Post a Comment
Read more