HER NAME WAS SOJOURNER TRUTH

Isabella, a slave, Sojourner Truth, as she later came to be known, was the only Negro to spend most of her life and most of her influence with white people. She never learned to read and write, but a fine mind, quick wit, and a sonorous speaking and singing voice combined to make possible her gifts in behalf of her people. As a child she spoke only the Low Dutch of her birthplace, under many masters in New York's County. When freedom came, in middle age, she took it trustfully and although she setbacks and vicissitudes at the hands of religious impostors, she won ultimate triumph as a symbol of selflessness and sincere spiritual piety. She became a lecturer and Gospel preacher, traveling as far West as Michigan, in the Biblical tradition. She was in with William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher and other ""feminist wives of husbands...a frequent division of labor."" Uncumbered meetings, before and after the Civil War thrilled to her greeting: ""Chilan, I talks to God, and God talks to me"". No matter what one's religious belief, one cannot remain unmoved by the vigorous record of life in slave families, the meaning of personal freedom, the of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the crucial significance of the Reconstruction. While Sojourner ""never saw a Greyhound bus, every Freedom Rile recalls the trolleys she struggled to board....She could not read a letter, but every child now walking the gauntlet of hate into a Southern school takes her advice to get behind the law"" Miss Pauli has written a book of tears and restasy.