Town Hall Meeting | Sojourner Truth

Friends, I thank you for letting old Sojourner say a few words this evening.

My name was not always Sojourner Truth. I was born Isabella, in Ulster County, New York, near the end of the last century, and I was born a slave. Before I was old enough to know my own name good, I was sold away from my mother and father — sold for a flock of sheep and some money, like I was no more than the sheep myself. I was sold three more times after that. I have felt the lash. I have carried burdens no man in this room would care to carry. And so when anybody tells me that slavery is a kindness, or that the Negro is content in his bondage, I stand up, because I know better, and I was there.

Sojourner Truth

I got my freedom in New York in 1826, but I did not wait on any man to hand it to me. My master had promised to free me and broke his word, so I made up my own mind on the matter. As I told him after: I did not run away, I walked away by daylight. There is a difference, friends. A woman who runs is ashamed. I was not ashamed. I was owed.

But freedom for myself was not enough of a victory while my own son was still in chains. They had sold my boy Peter down to Alabama, against the very laws of New York. So I went to the courts — a poor colored woman, unable to read a letter of print — and I brought a white man to answer for it. And I won. I believe I was the first woman of my color ever to take a white man to court in this country and get back what the law said was mine. I tell you that story not to boast on myself, but to show you: the law can be made to bend toward justice, if someone is willing to stand in front of it and demand that it do so.

In 1843 the Spirit called me to a different work. I put down the name Isabella and I took up the name Sojourner Truth, because I was to travel up and down the land and speak the truth to the people. And what truth was there more pressing than this — that four million souls in the Southern states were bought and sold like cattle, torn from their mothers, whipped for the sin of being born with dark skin? I have stood on platforms beside Mr. Frederick Douglass and Mr. William Lloyd Garrison and said so, plainly, in my own tongue, in the only language I ever needed — the truth.

I have heard fine arguments made in favor of colonization, of gradual measures, of patience. I have no patience for patience when it is bought with another person's back. I asked Frederick Douglass once, when he stood up discouraged and said slavery would only end in blood — I called out to him, "Is God dead?" I did not ask it to shame him. I asked it because despair is a poor argument against injustice, and because I have seen, in my own long life, that the arc does bend, slow as it is.

Sojourner with Abraham Lincoln 

During the war I did not sit idle. I gathered food and clothing for the Freedmen come up out of bondage into Washington. I rode the streetcars there when they did not want colored women riding, and I rode them anyway. I was received in the President's own house. I have given my life to this one plain proposition: that a person is a person, whatever the color of the skin God gave them, and no legislature, no court, and no habit of custom can make it otherwise.

So I ask this house tonight what I have asked every house I have stood in for forty years: not for pity, and not for charity — only for justice, and for the plain truth to be spoken until it is heard. Obliged to you for hearing me.

AI Disclosure: For this AI-assisted assignment, I used Claude AI to do historical research on my topic. After prompting the tools to do research based only on academic and high-quality sources, I asked Claude to shape the material in the form of a script for an oral presentation of 4 minutes. I edited the AI output for readability. I also policed the linked sources for quality control. To the blog post, I added visual elements and links to sources. I also made sure the paragraphs were short and in a professional style.