Truth, Sojourner (Isabella Baumfree)
c.1797-1883 · Contribution: 1827-1883
Itinerant preacher; abolitionist; women's rights advocate
Took on a divinely-inspired new name and identity in 1843 to become an itinerant preacher, building a decades-long ministry that fused evangelism with abolitionism and women's rights advocacy
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Quick facts
- Born
- c. 1797, Ulster County, New York
- Active since
- 1827
- Category
- Religious & Spiritual Leadership
- Best known for
- Preacher-activist who fused evangelism with abolition and women's rights
Impact on the world
Truth turned a divinely felt calling into one of the era's most powerful moral voices, using preaching, song, and wit to press the causes of abolition and women's equality across the North and Midwest.
Sources
- Christianity Today
1 more sources and references are available to members.
Related visionaries
Garnet, Henry Highland
1815-1882
Delivered the militant 1843 “Call to Rebellion” speech urging enslaved Americans to rise against their enslavers, later became the first Black American to preach a sermon inside the U.S. House of Representatives in 1865, and served as U.S. Minister to Liberia
Divine, Father (George Baker)
c.1876-1965
Founded the International Peace Mission movement, an early and aggressive force for racial desegregation decades before the mainstream civil rights movement
Payne, Daniel Alexander
1811-1893
First African American president of a college in the United States; transformed the AME Church's ministry into a formally educated clergy and helped found Wilberforce University
Hall, Prathia LauraAnn
1940-2002
Credited as the originator of the phrase “I have a dream,” spoken during a 1962 prayer vigil that Martin Luther King Jr. attended and later asked her permission to echo in his own preaching, while serving as one of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's first female field secretaries and later becoming a pioneering Baptist minister and womanist theologian