Isabella Baumfree took name Sojourner Truth - June 1, 1843

On this day in 1843, Isabella Baumfree took the name Sojourner Truth. Truth went on to become an abolitionist and advocate for Black and women's rights. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi, I'm Eves and Welcome to This Day
in History Class, a show that on covers history one
day at a time. Today is June one, nineteen. The

(00:26):
day was June one, eight forty three. Isabella Bomfree changed
her name to so Journer Truth. Truth was an abolitionist
and activists who dedicated her life to championing human rights.
Isabella Bomfrey was born around in Ulster County, New York.

(00:48):
Her father, James, was nicknamed Bomfree, and her mother, named Elizabeth,
was known as a mau mau bit. She was the
second youngest of thirteen children born to her parents, but
her siblings were sold or given away before she was born.
In her younger years, Isabella lived on an estate that
Dutch colonists owned, and the first language she spoke was

(01:11):
low Dutch, but when her owner died, she was put
up for auction and separated from her parents. Her next
owner was English speaking, but she was mistreated for her
inability to understand English. After that, a Dutch tavern keeper
purchased her, and in eighteen ten, John Dumont purchased her

(01:32):
for three hundred dollars. Dumont enslaved her for two decades.
She performed heart labor, including tasks like planting, plowing, cultivating
and harvesting crops, milking animals, sewing, cooking, and cleaning the house.
Dumont's wife, Elizabeth, despised her and John raped her. That

(01:54):
rape resulted in her child named Diana. When she was
slaved at the Dumonts, she fell in love with an
enslaved man named Robert from a nearby farm, but Robert's
owner beat him to death for meeting Isabella. Years later,
she met another enslaved man named Thomas, and had three

(02:16):
children with him, named Peter, Elizabeth, and Sophia. At the
end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the
nineteenth century, laws in New York provided for the emancipation
of enslaved black people, though there were stipulations and many
continued to be enslaved. Dumont agreed to emancipate Isabella before

(02:37):
she was set to be free by law, but he
renegged on his promise and she fled with her daughter Sophia.
She found refuge with the van Wagenens in New Paul's,
New York, who paid her twenty dollars for her work
until the date of her emancipation July four, eight seven,
but Dumont had illegally sold Isabella's son, Peter south to Alabama.

(03:01):
She was dedicated to finding Peter, and after taking her
son's case to illegal hearing at court, Peter was returned
from Alabama and freed. While she was staying with the
van Wagenens, she became a devout Christian. In eighteen twenty nine,
she and Peter moved to New York City. She became
a housekeeper, and when she was accused of being an

(03:23):
accomplice to murder and poisoning a couple, she was acquitted
of her charges and turned around and filed a slander
suit against the couple that claimed she tried to poison them.
She won the suit, but Isabella would meet more misfortune.
Her son, Peter, had taken a job on a whaling
ship in eighteen thirty nine. The ship he was supposed

(03:44):
to be on returned to New York in eighteen forty two,
but he was not on it and she never heard
from him again. The next year, Isabella decided to change
her life drastically as a Methodist. She said she was
called to speak God Truth across the countryside on June
one three, she took the name Sojourner Truth. In her autobiography,

(04:10):
she said the following. My name was Isabella. But when
I left the House of Bondage, I left everything behind.
I wasn't going to keep nothing of Egypt on me,
and so I went to the Lord and asked him
to give me a new name. And the Lord gave
me so Journer because I was to travel up and
down the land, showing the people their sins and being

(04:31):
a sign unto them. Afterwards, I told the Lord I
wanted another name, because everybody else had two names, and
the Lord gave me Truth because I was to declare
the truth to the people. After she moved to Massachusetts
and joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, utopian

(04:51):
community that was a stop on the underground railroad. She
met abolitionists like Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison. As
mention over slavery rose in the country, Truth began a
public lecture tour and traveled to states talking about her
experiences as an enslaved woman. She bought a house in Northampton,
which she paid off in a few years by selling

(05:13):
photos of herself. Throughout the rest of her life, she
continued to travel and advocate for the rights of women
and black people. She spoke out for abolition, women suffrage, desegregation,
and land grants performerly enslaved people, and she recruited black
men for the Union Army during the Civil War. In
her later years, she became skeptical of interracial cooperation and

(05:37):
supported racial separation and of black western homeland. She died
in eighteen eighty three in Battle Creek, Michigan. I'm Eve
Jeff Coote and hopefully you know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If there's something that
I missed in an episode, you can share it with
everybody else on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook at E d

(06:00):
I h C podcast. And if you want to learn
more about people who rebelled and resisted the status quo
in history, you can listen to the new podcast Unpopular.
It's a show that I host about people in history
who really challenged the conventions of their day and took
a stand against them. Thanks for joining me on this

(06:23):
trip through time. See you here in the exact same
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