Sojourner Truth
Activist and Black feminist icon (1797 - 1883) United States

Born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree, at the age of nine she was auctioned off along with a flock of sheep and later resold up to 3 times to different owners near New York. At 18, Truth fell in love with another slave, Robert. One day, when he was secretly visiting her, he was caught by his owner who beat him to death. This episode profoundly marked Truth's life. Years later, already married to another slave and with 5 children, Truth escaped with her youngest daughter (still a baby), having to leave her other children behind. A year later, after the Emancipation Act was approved in New York, Truth learned that her five-year-old son had been illegally sold. She took the cause to court and recovered her son, who had suffered abuse from his new owner, becoming the first Black woman to go to trial against a white man and win the case. Truth was a renowned speaker in defense of abolitionism and women's rights. Her famous speech, "Ain't I a woman?", delivered at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851, stands out as one of the first speeches of Afrofeminism and has shaped the spirit of Black feminism to this day.