Isabella Baumfree was born in Ulster County, New York in the year 1797. She was born a slave and emancipated on July 4, 1828 when the state of New York banned slavery. Her owner, John Dumont refused to free her when the law was passed so Truth and her infant daughter ran away and were taken in by the Van Wagener family. 

Sojourner had another child, a son who at 5 years old had been sold into slavery on a plantation in Alabama. Truth took the case to court and won her son's recovery in a suit setting a precedent that was unique for that  time. 

She never learned to read or write but became intensely and deeply involved in religion. Sojourner could quote extensively from the bible and she became a very forceful and moving speaker. 

After winning her freedom, Sojourner became an evangelist and adopted the name she is known by. She became a traveling preacher in 1843 and spoke out against slavery and for women's suffrage. 

Sojourner joined the Abolitionist Cause in 1844 and traveled through Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas telling her story. She always opened her speeches with the statement, "Children, I talks to God and God Talks to me."  Her story was published in a book by Olive Garrison titled, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth."  Harriet Beecher Stowe, (Uncle Tom's Cabin), prefaced her book after the Civil War.

Sojourner was appointed counselor to the  Freedmen's Bureau by Abraham Lincoln. She continued to fight for equal  rights for the freed blacks and  once forced a streetcar company in Washington D.C. to allow Blacks to ride. and then sued them when she was injured while riding.

She moved to Battle Creek, Michigan in 1850 where she led a somewhat quieter life. In 1870 she began promoting a plan to set aside undeveloped lands in the west as farms for Blacks. 

Sojourner Truth died in Battle Creek, Michigan on November 26, 1883.