March 1, 1828: Sojourner Truth goes to court
Sojourner Truth. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Before she became Sojourner Truth—and a symbol of feminism and abolition—she was Isabella Baumfree, born into slavery in New York’s Hudson Valley around 1797. Her parents, James and Elizabeth, were slaves to Johannes Hardenberg, a Dutch-speaking farmer in Ulster County in New York’s Catskill Mountains.
When she was 9, the Hardenbergs sold her, along with a small flock of sheep, for $100 to another Ulster County farmer, John Nealy. But having spoken only Dutch as a youth, her inability to speak English proved troublesome. After a few years and at least one more owner, she was procured by the family of John Dumont, around whom she became fluent in English, albeit with a Dutch accent. And because of a broken promise by Dumont, she was likely the first Black woman to win a court case against a white person.
The state of New York had a complicated relationship with slavery—and was one of the last northern states to abolish it. Although a state law passed in 1799 granted freedom to children born to slaves after July 4, 1799, the freedom was conditional: Males would remain enslaved until age 28, females until age 25. Moreover, the law did not apply to enslaved people, like Isabella, born before it was passed.
But antislavery sentiment—and the growing practice of selling slaves out of state—prompted an expansion of the law in 1817 to include all New York slaves, with a date certain of July 4, 1827, for their emancipation.
Like the law that kept her enslaved, the years Isabella spent with Dumont were similarly complicated. Compared to her previous owners, she regarded him as less cruel, but by degrees. And when Dumont said he would release her from bondage a year before he would be required to, she took him at his word. But when the time came, Dumont reneged, citing a lingering hand infection that had reduced her primary source of productivity: weaving.
While bound to the Dumonts, she married an older man and bore five children. And when she decided to leave in late 1826, she took with her an infant daughter, Sophia. She found refuge with a local couple, Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen, who subsequently paid for her unconditional release while she waited for the rest of her family to be liberated under New York’s emancipation law.
But when New York’s deadline had passed, Isabella—now Isabella Van Wagenen—discovered that her 5-year-old son Peter had been illegally transported to Alabama. Although he had promised to keep him in-state pending emancipation, Dumont had sold him for $20 to Eleazar Gedney, who planned to take him to England. Gedney decided Peter was too young, and he sold him to his brother Solomon Gedney, who in turn sent the boy to his brother-in-law in Alabama.
On March 1, 1928, with the help of two attorneys—Herman M. Romeyn and John Van Buren—Isabella filed a habeas corpus action with New York Supreme Court Commissioner Abraham Bruyn Hasbrouck demanding Peter’s release. Although he had denied the illegal transfer, Solomon Gedney quickly retrieved young Peter from Alabama for a hearing before Hasbrouck on March 14. Hasbrouck, after hearing testimony, ordered the child released.
In 1829, Isabella Van Wagenen moved to New York City, where she became involved in street preaching and with the abolitionist movement. In New York, her son Peter fell into trouble and, in 1839, began enlisting on whaling vessels. And although she received a few letters from him over the next several years, she never saw him again.
In 1843, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth to mark a recommitment to her religious beliefs. And despite never having learned to read or write, she began touring as a featured speaker on abolition and women’s rights. In 1851, at a women’s rights convention in Ohio, she delivered a speech that came to be known by its purported refrain: “Ain’t I a Woman?” Though the phrase never appeared in contemporaneous accounts, its inclusion in a well-intentioned but patronizing account published 12 years later became an indelible part of her legacy.
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