JUNETEENTH as... SOJOURNER TRUTH

ON june 19th 2025, We commemorate the abolition of slavery and the beginning of the emancipation of the human race in America. but The battle is not over, and it will never be, as long as there is inequity.

This is what Sojourner Truth, itinerant preacher, abolitionist, women's rights and equal rights activist, had to say: "Where would we stand if our learned and powerful leaders don’t concede to the power of the Lord Jesus manifesting as the wronged and the pain of the suppressed?"

(Sounds like we're there now!)

Artist, Meredith Bergman

ARTIST

 Meredith Bergmann

MATERIALS

Bronze and Granite 

14'

YEAR

2020

LOCATION

Central Park, NY, NY 

"I celebrate the day we as a nation recognize the emancipation of enslaved citizens and recognize their contributions to this nation and the world. We cannot be free until we are all free. Reparations are coming,"

said Sojourner at the 1st Equal Rights Association meeting. (Excerpt from I am Sojourner Truth, screenplay by T.A. Terga based on the speech at the 1ST EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION Meeting held on May 9, 1867 after the 13th when Men of African descent were given the right to vote and considered 5/8 of a citizen. Sojourner was happy for their triumph althoug it would be decades before Black vote in America could be cast for Blacks in politics.

Sojourner was disappointed that women had not received the same rights. But she was not surprised. This is what she had to say at the 1st ever Meeting of the AERA bettet known as the ERA: "

Sojourner Truth History: The Screenplay, I AM SOJOURNER TRUTH will not include the entire speech in the film, of course, but it's more relevant issues like the women's rights for equality and the above passage

From Slave to Civil Rights Activist: Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth Speech Delivered at the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association

New York City, May 9, 1867

My friends, I am rejoiced that you are glad, but I don't know how you will feel when I get through. I come from another field - the country of the slave. They have got their liberty - so much good luck to have slavery partly destroyed; not entirely. I want it root and branch destroyed. Then we will all be free indeed. I feel that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my body just as much as a man, I have a right to have just as much as a man. There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again. White women are a great deal smarter, and know more than colored women, while colored women do not know scarcely anything. They go out washing, which is about as high as a colored woman gets, and their men go about idle, strutting up and down; and take it all, and then scold because there is no food. I want you consider on that, chil'n. I call you chil'n; you are somebody's chil'n, and I am old enough to be mother of all that is here. I want women to have their rights. In the courts women have no right, no voice; nobody speaks for them. I wish woman to have her voice there among the pettifoggers. If it is not a fit place for women, it is unfit for men to be there.

I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all. I suppose I am kept here because something remains for me to do; I suppose I am yet to help to break the chain. I have done a great deal of work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay; so with the German women. They work in the field and do as much work, but do not get the pay. We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked. What we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough in our own pockets; and may be you will ask us for money. But help us now until we get it. It is a good consolation to know that when we have got this battle once fought we shall not be coming to you any more. You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again. I have been in Washington about three years, seeing about these colored people. Now colored men have the right to vote. There ought to be equal rights now more than ever, since colored people have got their freedom. I am going to talk several times while I am here; so now I will do a little singing. I have not heard any singing since I came here.

It was plain for her to see that a people without jobs and education would live in chains. For 3

The Libyan Sibyl, by William Wetmore Story, 1861

For 3 years Sojourner Truth, the African Sybil, campaigned for the Freedmen’s land grants in the west and collected hundreds of signatures everywhere she spoke – but all to no avail for the politics of freedom had already taken root in bureaucracy.

She thanked President Lincoln in person for his proclamation of emancipation, having already toiled long and hard to support the regiments in Detroit first, and in DC where she was part of the effort to find employment for the Freedmen. So, the Freedmen’s Village counselor she became, and when they came out of bondage in despair, her arms were outstretched to receive them.

During her DC Sojourn, Truth saw to it that the trolley system was desegregated and safe for her people and all kinds of people, to use public transportation services. She sued the driver and attendant of a trolley where she was pushed off and bruised her shoulder terribly. Luckily, she had conscious friends who were able to ride the trolley (they had the right skin color), and won. She won every court case she entered either as a deffendant or a plaintiff.

She would have been an attorney if she had been given the chance. She could talk sense into judges and convince

And speaking of LGBTQ rights, did you know Sojourner Truth was several times questioned about her gender?

In her zest for equal rights she said, “Let equal rights come.”

Later on, the refugees in Kansas proved her right. But who listened anyhow? Perhaps they’ll listen now, and their souls will come to rest in peace. That is what the Spirit of Truth wants for the people of the world.

Where would we stand if our learned and powerful leaders don’t concede to the power of the Lord Jesus manifesting as the wronged and the pain of the suppressed?

References Fitch, Suzanne Pullon and Mandziuk, Roseann M. Sojourner Truth as Orator. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997. Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojourner Truth. “A Life a Symbol.” New York, W. W. Norton & Company. 1996. Truth, Sojourner. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth with “Book of Life” and “Memorial Chapter.” Introduction and Notes by Imani Perry. New York, Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005.