On 1879, four years before Sojourner Truth died, a Louisville, Kentucky newspaper said of her, "The oldest truth nowadays is Sojourner." It was a tribute to both the seemingly boundless energy that still marked this remarkable woman's life as she entered her 83rd year, and to the fact that for decades she had traveled the country spreading the truth of the gospel.
Her early years as a slave had developed in Sojourner an intense passion for freedom, and she committed her life to the struggle to end human bondage. Seeing a vision of freedom for all as the only just goal, she argued vigorously against those who advocated postponing the fight for women's rights in favor of black rights, carrying in her own being proof that the issues could not be separated. Her voice rang out from one end of the country to the other in a call for women's suffrage and an end to slavery.
She relied on God's provision and the hospitality of strangers as she carried her message. She talked with authors and abolitionists, preachers and presidents. But most of all, she talked with God, with whom she had an unending conversation that began when she was a child and who was her source of guidance on every step of her journey.
Sojourner remained illiterate and once said of herself, "I can't read a book, but I can read the people." Indeed her understanding of human nature was profound, and she possessed a combination of fiery wit and gentle wisdom that had an effect on all who met her.
She not only agitated for the political rights of her people, she gave herself in service to their needs. When thousands of freed slaves left the South in the 1860s, she devoted her energies to those who fled to Washington, D.C. Crowded into squalid shanties, with no hope for education or employment, the freed slaves were discarded and forgotten by the society they had served. But Sojourner, then in her 70s, gave herself to every need.
An admirer of her said at that time:
When we follow her from one field of labor to another, her time being divided between teaching, preaching, nursing, watching, and praying, ever ready to counsel, comfort, and assist, we feel that, for one who is nobody but a woman, an unlettered woman, a black woman, and an old woman, a woman born and bred a slave, nothing short of the Divine incarnated in the human could have wrought out such grand results.
Clearly her society expected nothing much from this woman of such humble circumstances. But by her faithfulness, she was anointed a messenger of God's truth and became one of the finest bearers of Christ's love.
SOJOURNER TRUTH WAS the unanimous choice of the Sojourners staff for this year's December incarnation issue, keeping our annual Christmas tradition of focusing on a person who incarnates Christ's love. In addition to being namesakes, we share the desire to be on a journey of faithfulness to Christ that advocates justice and freedom and bears fruit in service to others. Sojourner strides before us as a shining example.
She walked the same streets that Sojourners Community now inhabits in inner-city Washington, D.C. More than a hundred years ago, she gazed at the resplendent dome of the Capitol building and cried out in anguish about what we now call the "two Washingtons"--the powerful and prestigious one downtown and the powerless and poor one just a mile away.
While she was here, she helped to organize resistance to raiders from Maryland who crossed into the capital city and kidnaped the children of freed slaves. On one occasion she encouraged three mothers to turn to the law to get their children back, and the enraged kidnapers threatened to throw her in jail. "If you do," she said to them, "I will make the United States rock like a cradle."
Her promise is an appropriate image for her life. It brings to mind the gentle arm of a loving mother at the cradle and, at the same time, a country rocking from top to bottom, both angered and swayed by the powerful passion of a fiery woman.
The work that Sojourner began continues still in the fight for justice. In this struggle we are being upheld by the strong and compassionate arm of a faithful woman who showed the way. And the country is still rocking. May we have as much determination and courage as our dear sister, Sojourner Truth.
Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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