Sojourner Truth "Children, I talk to God and God talks to me!" This was the usual opening of abolitionist, or antislavery, speaker and civil rights pioneer Sojourner Truth. Her real name was Isabella Van Wagener, and she was born a slave in Ulster County, N.Y., in about 1797. The circumstances surrounding her liberation are uncertain, but her surname was taken from Isaac Van Wagener, who was reportedly the last of several masters and the man …
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…selling copies of 'The Narrative of Sojourner Truth', which she had dictated to a friend. She was a powerful foe of slavery, and in the 1850s she added the women's rights movement to her causes. During the Civil War she served as a counselor to freed slaves in Washington, D.C. Her later years were spent helping freed slaves and lecturing in the North. She died at her home in Battle Creek, Mich., on Nov. 26, 1883.