Isabella Baumfree took name Sojourner Truth / Heimlich Maneuver published - June 1

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. / On this day in 1974, the Heimlich Maneuver was unveiled in an article in the journal Emergency Medicine.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everyone, it's Eves checking in here to let you
know that you're going to be hearing two different events
in history in this episode. They're both good, if I
do say so myself. On with the show. Hi, I'm Eves,
and welcome to this Day in History Class, a show
that on covers history one day at a time. The

(00:28):
day was June one, forty three. Isabella Bomfree changed her
name to so Journal Truth Truth was an abolitionist and
activists who dedicated her life to championing human rights. Isabella
Bomfree was born around in Ulster County, New York. Her father, James,

(00:52):
was nicknamed bom Free and her mother, named Elizabeth, was
known as a mau Maubt. She was a 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 Low Dutch,

(01:15):
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 for three

(01:35):
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 rape resulted in

(01:58):
her child, named Diane Uh. When she was enslaved 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 children with him,

(02:19):
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 she was set to

(02:40):
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 Pault's, New York, who
paid her twenty dollars for her work until the date
of her emancipation July fourth, eighteen seven. But Dumont had
illegally old Isabella's son, Peter south to Alabama. She was

(03:04):
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 accomplice to

(03:26):
murder and poisoning a couple, she was acquitted of her
charges and turned around and fouled 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 to

(03:47):
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's truth across the countryside. On June one,
forty three, she took the name Sojourner Truth. In her autobiography,

(04:12):
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 Journal, because I was to travel up and
down the land, showing the people their sins and being

(04:33):
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

(04:53):
community that was a stop on the underground railroad. She
met abolitionists like Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison. As
tension 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

(05:15):
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

(05:39):
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 t d

(06:03):
I HC 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 trip through time.

(06:27):
See you here in the exact same spot tomorrow. Hey, y'all,
I'm Eves and welcome to the Stand History Class, a
podcast that truly believes no day in history is a
slow day. The day was June one, ninety four. The

(06:57):
Timelike maneuver was unveiled in an article hole in the
journal Emergency Medicine. The Heimlich maneuver is a technique used
to stop a person from choking. At the time, choking
was a common cause of accidental death in the US.
The American Red Cross recommended slapping a choking victim on
the back to help them if coughing did not work.

(07:18):
That would dislodge the food or other objects that caused
the person to choke, but some doctors believed that backslaps
could lodge an object deeper in the airway. A thoracic
surgeon named Dr Henry Heimlike decided to find a better
way to rescue people who were choking. In the nineteen sixties,
Heimlich had invented a device that drained fluid from open

(07:39):
test wounds that used a flutter valve to prevent backflow.
The Heimlich valve saw use in the Vietnam War, as
well as American hospitals. Of the early nineteen seventies, Heimlich
had turned his attention to anti choking techniques. He first
tested his methods on dogs, then worked to adapt his
procedure for people. He wanted any body to be able

(08:00):
to perform the procedure, not just medical professionals. On June one,
nine four, the journal Emergency Medicine published an article by
Himlike that detailed a method for helping people who are choking.
The article was titled Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary. The
term cafe coronary refers to a sudden death due to

(08:20):
food obstructing the airway. Timelike called the method subdiare fragmatic pressure,
and this method, air expelled through the victim's lungs would
propel the object out of the victim's throat. There are
several positions a person can be in to administer the
Himelike maneuver. A well known one is when a person
stands behind the choking victim, puts their thumb inside their

(08:42):
fists just above the navel, and grabs their fists with
their opposite hand. Then the rescuer presses inward and upward
on the person's belly to free the obstruction from their airway.
The maneuver can also be done on someone lying on
their back, and people can perform it on themselves. The
Himelian neuver gained popularity, and Heimlich made television appearances promoting

(09:04):
the method. Celebrities claimed it saved them from choking. A
few months after the article was published, the Journal of
the American Medical Association dubbed the method the Heimlich maneuver.
By nineteen seventy six, the American Heart Association and American
Red Cross recommended performing abdominal thrust on a choking victim

(09:24):
if backslaps did not work. A decade later, both organizations
stopped recommending backslaps and only recommended the Heimlike maneuver for choking.
One of Heimlike sons, Peter Heimlich, said that his father
tried to discredit the practice of hitting someone on the
back to keep them from choking. Peter also said that
his father funded a study in the nineteen eighties that

(09:46):
concluded hits to the back could be more harmful than beneficial.
He claimed that his father was a fraud who was
good at public relations, and that the Heimlich Institute just
promotes his father's dangerous ideas into dozen three. Henry Himlick's
colleague Dr Edward Patrick claimed that he helped develop the
maneuver but was not credited for it. Himlike has been

(10:08):
criticized for his work by others as well. He called
for the use of the Himeli maneuver and cases of
near drowning and asthma, but its effectiveness in these cases
has been discredited and it could even prove harmful. Himli
also advocated malarial therapy, which is the controversial process of
purposefully infecting a person with malaria to help them with HIV,

(10:31):
lime disease, cancer, and other conditions. Now, the American Red
Cross recommends trying five backslaps for people who are conscious
and choking, and if that doesn't work, trying five abdominal thrust.
The American Heart Association still only recommends abdominal thrust for
conscious choking. Timelike claimed that his maneuver has saved tens

(10:53):
of thousands of lives, but there's debate over just how
effective and safe. It is. I'm eas Jeff Cote, and
hopefully you know a little more about history today than
you did yesterday. And if you have any comment, Star
suggestions are just nice notes that you want to send us.
You can send those to This Day at iHeart media

(11:13):
dot com. If you want to hit us up on
social media, we're at t D I h C Podcast
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks so much for listening
to the show and we'll see you tomorrow. For more
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(11:34):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.