Mtr Kelli Joyce

Almighty God, who has made the Church to be one body with many members and many gifts: we thank you for the witness of your daughter, Sojourner Truth, and for her courage to preach the truth of your liberating love in the face of great injustice. Grant that we, like her, may use our time, talents, and energy to proclaim the coming of your Kingdom, which is good news to the poor, and in which all the oppressed shall be made free; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Friends in Christ,

Today is the Feast of Sojourner Truth. She died on November 26th, 1883, and so today is the reasonable day for her life to be observed according to the tradition of the Church, but it was only last year that she began to be celebrated on this day. She was initially added to our calendar of Saints as part of a group of several women who shared a single feast day, grouped together because of their shared history of resistance to racism and misogyny. In the 2018 edition of our calendar of the Saints (titled “Lesser Feasts and Fasts”), many of these groups of Saints were broken up and their members received their own day.

I know this backstory mostly because I had the privilege, mostly by happenstance, of being asked to choose the readings and write the biography and collect for Sojourner Truth for Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2018. I had no idea that I would get to write about her for Daily Bread the next year! I learned a great deal about her in writing her brief biography, and so I share that material here with you.

Mtr. Kelli

“Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree to James and Elizabeth Baumfree near the turn of the 19th century, spent the first twenty-eight years of her life as a slave in the state of New York. During that time, she was separated first from her siblings and then from her children as they were sold to various slaveholders. In 1826, when her owner refused to honor his promise to emancipate her ahead of New York’s abolition of slavery, Sojourner took her infant daughter and, in her words, “walked off, believing that to be all right.” She later learned that her young son Peter had been illegally sold by her former master, and was enslaved in Alabama. She filed suit, and in 1828, two years after her escape, she won her case, becoming one of the first black women to ever prevail in an American court over a white man.

With slavery abolished in the state, Sojourner moved to New York City a free woman. Having undergone a religious conversion after her escape, she became involved in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded when white members of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia would not permit African-Americans to worship alongside them as equals. Heartened by the knowledge that a black woman, Jarena Lee, had been ordained as a minister in the AME tradition, Truth was known to preach and pray and sing with remarkable passion and eloquence. She also worked at a shelter for homeless women, convinced that showing Christ’s love required meeting the material needs of the poor and vulnerable. The next decades of her life would prove tumultuous for Sojourner. She was abused by men in positions of religious authority, and in 1835 was falsely accused of crimes she did not commit - she was acquitted of all charges, and later successfully sued her accusers for slander.

At approximately forty-six years old, Sojourner heard a call from God, telling her to go east and preach the gospel, telling the truth of her experiences as a slave and the Christian imperative to support the abolition of slavery. It was at this time that she abandoned the names given to her by her master at birth, taking up for herself the name Sojourner Truth. After over a year of itinerant preaching, she joined an abolitionist co-operative in Northampton, Massachusetts, which had been founded on principles of women’s rights and pacifism in addition to its abolitionist mission. While there, Sojourner met other now-famous abolitionists and suffragists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.

Sojourner became a traveling preacher, approaching white religious meetings and campgrounds and asking to speak. Captivated by her charismatic presence, her wit, and her wisdom, they found her hard to refuse. She never learned to read or write, but quoted extensive Bible passages from memory in her sermons. She ended by singing a “home-made” hymn and addressing the crowd on the evils of slavery. Her reputation grew and she became part of the abolitionist and women’s rights speakers’ network.

During a women’s rights convention in Ohio, Sojourner gave the speech for which she is best remembered, now known as “Ain’t I a Woman.” She had listened for hours to clergy attack women’s rights and abolition, using the Bible to support their oppressive logic: God had created women to be weak and blacks to be a subservient race. Speaking extemporaneously, she exposed the hypocrisy of the white male ministers, pointing out the ways in which slavery had forced her to become as strong as any man, and noting that Jesus himself never turned women away or refused to teach them on account of their gender.

Until her death, she continued to speak and preach, advocating for the right to vote to be expanded to all women, not only white women, promoting the total abolition of slavery, and after the Civil War, petitioning for freed slaves to be given land of their own as part of America’s westward expansion. Sojourner passed away at her home in Michigan on November 26, 1883.”