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Sojourner Truth was a leading advocate of abolition, civil rights, women’s rights, and temperance. Born into slavery in New York and bought and sold four times, she escaped to freedom in 1826. In 1828, she sued to recover her enslaved son, becoming the first Black woman to win such a case. In 1850, she dictated her autobiography to Olive Gilbert, which was published as The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. The book brought her national recognition and she survived on its sales. Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron. In the speech, she combined calls for abolition with equal human rights for all women.

During the Civil War, Truth recruited Black men for the Union cause and organized supplies for Black troops. In October 1864 she was honored with an invitation to the White House to meet President Lincoln and later became involved with the Freedmen’s Bureau, helping the formerly enslaved find jobs and build new lives. While in Washington, D.C., she lobbied against segregation, and in the late 1860s, collected thousands of signatures on a petition to provide formerly enslaved people with land, though Congress never took action.