The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth is a multilayered autobiography, dictated by the formerly enslaved Isabella (later Sojourner Truth), who could not read or write, to her neighbor Olive Gilbert. A later edition, compiled by Truth's friend and informal manager Frances Titus, adds a "Book of Life" containing articles, speeches, and correspondence, as well as a memorial chapter documenting Truth's death.

The Narrative opens with Isabella's birth in Hurley, Ulster County, New York, where she and her parents were enslaved by Colonel Ardinburgh, a Dutch-speaking slaveholder. Isabella's parents, James (called "Bomefree," meaning "tree" in Low Dutch) and Elizabeth (called "Mau-mau Bett"), farmed a small plot granted by their master during evenings and Sundays. The family slept in a damp cellar beneath the master's hotel, conditions that caused lifelong ailments. Mau-mau Bett bore 10 or 12 children, most sold away before Isabella could remember. By firelight, her parents grieved over these lost children, and her mother taught Isabella to pray to God when mistreated, pointing to the stars and moon as a link to her scattered siblings.

When the master died, Isabella, approximately nine years old, and her brother Peter were sold at auction. Their aging parents received their freedom on the condition that Mau-mau Bett care for the infirm Bomefree. She soon died of palsy, leaving him blind and alone. Bomefree was passed among relatives and eventually found frozen to death in a cabin.

Isabella's new owner, John Nealy, spoke only English while she spoke only Dutch, and miscommunication led to severe punishment: Nealy whipped her with a bundle of heated rods, leaving permanent scars. Her father arranged her sale to a fisherman named Scriver, and after about a year and a half, she was sold in 1810 to John J. Dumont, with whom she remained until shortly before her emancipation in 1828. Dumont treated his enslaved workers with relative consideration, but his wife subjected Isabella to persistent trials. Dumont boasted that Isabella worked harder than a man, and she came to regard him as godlike, even defending slavery as right and honorable, a position she later viewed with astonishment.

Isabella's romantic life under slavery was shaped by violence. An enslaved man named Robert from a neighboring farm was brutally beaten by his owners for visiting her, since any children would belong to Isabella's master. Robert never returned and died young. Isabella was married to a fellow enslaved man named Thomas in a ceremony performed by another enslaved person, as no legal marriage was recognized. She bore five children.

Dumont promised Isabella freedom one year before the state's legal emancipation date but reneged, citing lost labor from her diseased hand. Before dawn one morning, she walked away carrying her infant daughter Sophia and her belongings in a cotton handkerchief. She found refuge with Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen, who paid Dumont for her remaining service. Van Wagenen told her not to call him master, saying there was only one master, the same for both of them.

Isabella learned that her five-year-old son Peter had been illegally sold out of New York State into Alabama. She confronted her former mistress, who dismissed her, and the mother of the man who arranged the sale, who laughed at her distress. Isabella declared that God would help her recover her son. Quakers directed her to the courthouse in Kingston, where she filed a legal complaint. When Peter was brought before the court, he clung to his former master and denied knowing his mother, having been trained to fear her. The judge ruled Peter must be given to Isabella. She discovered his body covered in scars from severe beatings.

During this period, Isabella underwent a transformative religious experience. She had an overwhelming vision of God's all-pervading presence, which filled her with terror at her own sinfulness. A luminous figure appeared as her intercessor, and when she asked who it was, the answer came: "It is Jesus." This experience replaced her dread of God with love and joy, and her faith in prayer became absolute.

Isabella and Peter moved to New York City. Peter fell in with bad companions and was eventually shipped on a whaling vessel in the summer of 1839. Three letters arrived between 1840 and 1841. After the third, Isabella never heard from her son again. In New York, she joined various churches and discovered long-lost siblings at the Zion African Church. She was drawn into the "Kingdom" of the Prophet Matthias, a self-proclaimed prophet named Robert Matthews who declared himself God on earth. Isabella invested her savings in the commune's common fund, but the Kingdom collapsed amid scandal, and she lost everything.

Disillusioned with city life, Isabella transformed herself on the morning of June 1, 1843, into the itinerant preacher Sojourner Truth. She told her employer that her name was no longer Isabella but Sojourner, crossed to Brooklyn with a pillowcase of clothing and 25 cents, and headed east to preach. She arrived at the Northampton Association for Education and Industry in Massachusetts, a utopian community where she met abolitionists and feminists for the first time. At a nearby camp meeting, Truth single-handedly subdued a mob of more than 100 rioters by singing a hymn, captivating them with her voice and negotiating their peaceful departure.

The Narrative closes in 1849 with Truth visiting her eldest daughter Diana and her former master Dumont, who told her that slavery was "the wickedest thing in the world." Truth laughed that he had taught his enslaved workers not to lie and steal while he was "stealing all the time" and did not know it. She blessed him and called him a brother.

The "Book of Life," compiled by Titus, documents Truth's public career from 1851 onward. It includes feminist writer Frances Dana Gage's account of Truth's speech at the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, where Truth challenged ministers who argued against women's rights by declaring her own strength and suffering, in remarks associated with the refrain "Ar'n't I a Woman?" It also reproduces Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1863 Atlantic Monthly article, "Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl"—Stowe was the celebrated author of Uncle Tom's Cabin—describing Truth's commanding presence and spiritual power.

The collection records Truth's confrontations with pro-slavery forces in Indiana and her Civil War activities, including visiting President Abraham Lincoln in October 1864 and working among freed people at Freedman's Village, a settlement for formerly enslaved people in Arlington Heights, Virginia. Truth challenged racial discrimination on Washington's streetcars, filing assault charges against a conductor who injured her shoulder and helping desegregate the system.

After the war, Truth devoted herself to securing western land for freed people, arguing that the government owed them land in exchange for generations of unpaid labor. She drafted a petition to Congress and lectured across the country to gather signatures. She visited President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870 and advocated women's suffrage and temperance, continuing to speak into her eighties. Letters from prominent reformers, including Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, testify to her influence and character.

The Memorial Chapter describes Truth's death on November 26, 1883, in Battle Creek, Michigan. Nearly 1,000 people attended her funeral. The abolitionist Frederick Douglass telegraphed from Washington, calling her "a marked figure" distinguished for insight into human nature and independence. The abolitionist Wendell Phillips praised her eloquence and wit. The chapter closes with Truth's favorite hymn about going home to a world of light, and the text of her original antislavery song pleading for her people.