Sojourner Truth And The Civil Rights Movement

Approximately 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states inhabited an unequal world of segregation and oppression. In the decade and a half that followed, civil rights activists used nonviolent protest and civil disobedience to bring about change. Many leaders from the African American community became dominant during the Civil rights era. They risked their lives for freedom and equality. This movement had roots of African slaves and their descendants to resist and abolish slavery. American slaves were granted the civil rights through the passage of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution. Black activists had begun to see the movement as confronting economic, political and cultural preferences. As a leader, it was time to stand up for what’s right and take a stand for freedom and mutual respect as a struggling African American. …show more content…
Her father, James Baumfree was slave captured in Ghana. Elizabeth Baumfree, her mother was the daughter of slaves from Guinea. According to the editors of Biography.com, “she was born into slavery, but escaped with her daughter to freedom in 1826. Truth fell in love with a slave named Robert around 1815. Later they got married and had a son name Peter and two daughters, Elizabeth and Sophia. Her early years were marked by strange hardships.” All slaves, were emancipated on July 4, 1827 and she escaped with her infant daughter. Her other daughter and son stayed behind. After the escape, she learned that her son was illegally sold to a man in Alabama. Truth’s rescue of her son was a success. At the time Peter took a job on a whaling ship, and she received three letters in between 1840 and 1841. When the ship returned in 1842, Peter was not on board and she never heard from him