Sojourner Truth: Her Voice, Courage, Legacy: 7

Born into slavery in New York near the end of the eighteenth century, Isabella Baumfree entered a world in which nearly every important choice could be made for her. She was bought and sold, separated from family members, denied an education, and forced to labor for others. Yet the woman who would rename herself Sojourner Truth refused to allow that beginning to determine the rest of her life. After securing her freedom, Truth fought successfully for the return of her young son, became a traveling preacher, and emerged as one of the nineteenth century's most memorable voices against slavery and inequality. She spoke before abolitionist and women's rights audiences, encouraged Black men to serve in the Union Army during the Civil War, worked to improve conditions for newly freed people, challenged racial discrimination, and carried her demands for equality into the Reconstruction era. Sojourner Truth: Her Voice, Her Courage, Her Legacy follows her remarkable journey from enslavement to national prominence while looking beyond the legends that have sometimes overshadowed the historical woman. It also examines the complicated history of her famous 1851 speech, commonly remembered as "Ain't I a Woman?" and separates later retellings from the earliest surviving account. This is the story of a woman who could not read or write but made a nation listen; a woman who transformed the hardships of her own life into a lifelong fight for freedom, dignity, and equal rights.