The woman born enslaved in Dutch-speaking New York who freed herself by walking away, sued a white man to recover her stolen son and won, renamed herself Sojourner Truth, and became one of the most powerful spoken voices in America for the freedom of both Black people and women — remembered, partly through a later legend, for a speech that asked the nation whether she was not a woman too.
Sometime around 1797, in the Hudson Valley of New York, a girl was born enslaved to a Dutch-speaking master and given the name Isabella. She would be sold several times, beaten, and parted from her children. In 1826, carrying her infant daughter, she simply walked away, a year before New York freed its last slaves. Then she did something rare for a Black woman of her time. She went into a white man's court to recover a young son who had been sold illegally to the South, and she won. In 1843 she took a new name, Sojourner Truth, and became a traveling preacher. She could neither read nor write. Her power was entirely in her voice, and she turned it against slavery and against the men who said the vote and the platform were not for women.