We Will Be Free

To write about a historical or cultural icon is a brave undertaking. Not only must the project engage its readers, but also it must offer them insight into some under-inspected aspect of the subject’s life and work—shed light on a stone unturned by previous scholars. In We Will Be Free: The Life and Faith of Sojourner Truth, Nancy Koester’s focus on the life and faith of Sojourner Truth, neé Isabella, accomplishes both as she situates the abolitionist preacher within the larger story of America’s complex engagement with slavery, civil war, abolition, national reconstruction, and women’s rights, all told through the lens of Truth’s Christian faith.

In its nineteen chapters, We Will Be Free walks readers through critical moments of Truth’s life, first as an enslaved woman entangled in the New York slave system, and later as an outspoken defender of abolition and women’s rights, all while preaching the “truth” she believed God called her to spread throughout New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia, Michigan, and Washington, DC. The biography highlights the births of Truth’s five children, her decision to free herself from New York enslaver John Dumont by literally walking away from him, and her bold decision to sue for the return of her son Peter after he was sold south contrary to New York state law. She won her case in March 1828, “the first time in history a Black woman successfully sued a White man for a family member’s freedom” (29).

Later, as she was embroiled in a legal battle to clear her name of being an accessory to murder, Truth would request a character reference from her former enslaver and former employers to press charges of slander against false accusations. They described Isabella as “faithful, honest, industrious, hardworking, trustworthy; one called her a ‘woman of extraordinary moral purity’” (57). Throughout the biography, Koester positions Truth as brilliantly and decisively aware of the systems in place to keep her imprisoned but unwilling to be trapped by social order or deterred from her purpose. At one gathering she sang, “I bless the Lord I’ve got my seal . . . I mean to take the kingdom in the good old way” (80).

Koester follows Truth’s move to New York City from upstate New York, which would eventually catapult her into ministry and initiate her involvement in key spiritual movements of the early 19^th century, such as the one led by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and with evangelism reform leaders, like Elijah Pierson; the Millerites, a sect dedicated to preparing for and pinpointing the return of Jesus Christ; and religious extremists like Robert Matthews, known as Matthias the Prophet. While Koester notes Truth’s ability to excel at “deflating pompous men, exposing hypocrites, and facing down bullies” (59-60), her description of Truth’s accomplishments is balanced, never sensational.

In addition, Koester positions the well-known figure as vulnerable yet strong, a woman and mother constantly working towards something bigger and more important than herself. While the fulsome biography helps readers understand Truth’s work as it intersected with that of abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott, the book’s foreword, written by Alicia K. Jackson, invites readers to consider Truth along a spectrum of Black women activists, including Ida B. Wells, Mamie Till-Mobley, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Tarana Burke, the mother of the #MeToo movement, all committed to racial equality and social justice in the 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st centuries.

Koester gently pulls readers through the biography’s narrative, piquing their interests at the end of each chapter by brilliantly connecting the preacher’s life and work to some significant moment in America’s perpetual struggle to fulfill its own democratic ideals, such as in chapter 8, “Make Me a Double Woman,” which describes Truth’s experience at the first National Women’s Rights Convention in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Pointing to the convention’s racial divisiveness, Koester notes that the several “dark-colored sisters” seated in the corners of the convention hall ironically “heard resolutions calling for equality in employment, religion, education, property, and voting rights” (99).

And when Lucretia Mott gave the convention’s closing address, she quoted Truth, “Goodness [is] from everlasting and will never die, while evil had a beginning and must come to an end” (100). Or at the end of chapter 10, “Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?,” after describing Truth’s decisive oratorical take-down of a proslavery attendee at an antislavery event in Boston in 1855, Koester balances the victory against the brutal caning in 1856 of Senator Charles Sumner in the US Senate chamber by proslavery US Congressman Preston Brooks.

Further, at critical points in the text, Koester links Truth to key moments in America’s yet unrealized journey towards civil and social equality. Truth’s humiliating yet ultimately jubilant encounter on DC public transit in 1865 links her to both Rosa Parks and the Freedom Riders of the modern civil rights movement. This is, in part, the important contribution Koester’s work makes, helping readers to consider the stutter steps of history.

Where the text might mine additional and critical connections is to Black preaching women who worked the Gospel fields alongside Truth, particularly in the mid-Atlantic region. For while her faith fueled her work and purpose as a mother and reformer, Sojourner was not the only Black woman to heed the call to preach the truth. The challenge of being called to defend both her personhood and womanhood while proclaiming the Christian Gospel was experienced by many Black women preachers throughout the 19^th century, including Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, Julia Foote, and Amanda Berry Smith. Thus, Truth was a part of a larger tradition of Black preaching women who employed Pauline biblical doctrine to support their callings and ministries.

Koester’s is an important work that wrestles with the mistakes and misinterpretations of Truth’s own dictated narrative, published in 1850 by Olive Gilbert. The author’s research builds upon the foundational contributions of historians like Nell Irvin Painter, Deborah Gray White, and Margaret Washington, and is shaped by her own lovely gift for storytelling.

Crystal J. Lucky is a professor of English at Villanova University.

Crystal J. Lucky

Date Of Review:

October 25, 2023