This is an inspirational biography about a strong, intelligent, and charismatic woman. Sojourner Truth was a Northern slave until she was 28 and by New York law had to be freed. She was one of the first black women to win a lawsuit against a white man. The man had illegally sold her son to a Southerner. For many years she wandered the Northern U.S. speaking against slavery. She did not read and write, but she had her autobiography transcribed. She needed no preparation for her speeches. Everything she needed to speak was in her mind and heart. She absorbed everything she heard, and her courage and conviction matched her intelligence. Sojourner Truth also became an important speaker on behalf of women's rights. Arguments of female weakness could not stand with the evidence of her life before the audience. She knew how to counter every argument placed before her. After the Civil War, she worked tirelessly to gain support for a bill to give Western land to freed slaves so that they might become self-supporting citizens.
related-slavery, women's suffrage, social reform, abolitionists, black history
RL=6th-YA