One of the most renowned of the female abolitionist was Sojourner Truth. Truth was a "talking" abolitionist, a preacher, seer, and teacher. Born Isabella in upstate New York in 1797 (or thereabouts), she had an interesting succession of slave masters. In 1827, she became free under New York's gradual emancipation act. By then she had been through an emotional nightmare. With hardly a breath in between, she headed straight for another one by joining a group of eccentrics who preached a "religious" doctrine of "match spirits". Isabella followed this group to Sing Sing, New York, where it disintegrated amid wild headlines of murder and loose sexual goings-on. Isabella was not (at all) involved in the shady sexual encounters. This was due to her strong strength of Character. As stated frankly by Isabella herself, "It was impossible to match her spirit".

At this juncture and perhaps the low point of her life, she went through a powerful spiritual experience that changed her life. On June 1, 1843, she walked out of New York City with a bag of clothes, twenty-five cents and a new name: Sojourner Truth. "the Lord", she said, "gave me the name Sojourner because I was to travel up and down the land showing folks their sins and being a sign to them". Afterwards I told the Lord, "I wanted another name cause everybody else had two names; and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth unto all people."

True to both names, she walked the land for more than forty years, preaching, teaching, and testifying. The great and (near great) sang her praises and quoted her strong and striking utterances. Harriet Beecher Stowe could never forget the sight of her-a gaunt, misty-eyed woman in a gray dress, a white turban and a sunbonnet, calm and erect, like "one of her native palm trees waving alone in the desert". Novelist Stowe said she had never met anyone who had more personal presence. "She seemed perfectly self-possessed and at her ease; in fact, there was almost an unconscious superiority in the off, composed manner in which she looked down on me".

On a platform, Truth was unforgettable. Though illiterate, she had power and an incisive mind that reduced things to their essentials. On one occasion, a pro-slavery heckler told her: "Old woman, do you think your talk about slavery does any good? Why I don't care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea". Sojourner Truth smiled and replied: "Perhaps not, but with the good Lord willing, I'll keep you scratching".