Throughout history, society has been presented with many predicaments and complications. Many wrongs have been made and social activists play a major role in righting those wrongs. They have such an influence on humankind that some of the greatest moments of triumph throughout the ages are credited to them. Two of the most successful social activists that have brought about some of the most remarkable advances throughout history are Sojourner Truth and Susan B. Anthony.
Sojourner Truth, originally named Isabella Baumfree, was born a slave in 1797, in Hurley, New York. She was first sold around the age of ten, but that was not all she was put through. From an early age, she was sold multiple times, beaten, put through cruel physical labor, and overall horribly mistreated. Later in her life, she was forced to marry a man who was also a slave. She and her husband had five kids. After being a slave for about twenty-eight years of her life, Truth escaped with her daughter in 1826. Following her escape, she converted to Christianity and changed her name to Sojourner Truth. According to the African American Odyssey, she believed that she was called by God to travel around the nation and to preach the truth of his word, hence why she changed her name to Sojourner Truth. She became a preacher and spoke at camp meetings and public events about abolition and women’s rights. This was just the beginning of her work as a social activist.
Sojourner Truth traveled thousands of miles giving passionate, influential speeches. In 1851, she delivered “Ain’t I A Woman”, one of the most famous speeches about the rights of African Americans and women, at a Women’s Rights Convention. In addition to inspiring people with her words, she also contributed to humankind through her actions. During the Civil War, she helped recruit black soldiers into the Union army. Along with helping recruit soldiers, she sang and preached to raise money for them. Sojourner was known as the first African American woman to win a lawsuit against a white man in the United States. In 1828, her son had been illegally sold after the New York Anti-Slavery Law had been passed. She filed a lawsuit against the man that sold her son and won, able to regain custody of him.
Sojourner later moved to Battle Creek, Michigan where she continued to speak about women’s suffrage and helped freed slaves find homes and build new lives. Her work eventually led her to meet President Abraham Lincoln in 1864. In 1883, Sojourner Truth passed away at the age of 86. According to PBS, her final words were “be a follower of the Lord Jesus”. She stayed faithful to her beliefs even in her last moments.
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Susan Brownell Anthony was born into a Quaker family in 1820, in Adams Massachusetts. Daughter of Daniel and Lucy Read Anthony, Susan grew up in a family that was heavily involved in politics, resulting in her developing strong beliefs from an early age. Her family of abolitionists worked to end slavery, which influenced her, as she was only sixteen when she began to collect Anti-Slavery petitions. In 1826, her family moved to Battenville, New York. Later on, she was sent to attend a school near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father’s business failed in the late 1830s, leading her to move back home. In 1845, her family moved to a farm in Rochester, New York, where anti-slavery gatherings were held.
Anthony’s commitment to women’s rights first began when she attended a temperance convention. She and her family were part of the temperance movement when, at this convention, she was denied the chance to speak, simply because of her gender. She realized that no women would be taken seriously in politics, unless they were given the right to vote, thus sparking a passion within Susan for women’s suffrage. With this passion, she traveled across the country speaking and campaigning for women’s suffrage and property rights. Anthony became a pioneer and one of the leading figures of the women’s suffrage movement. Alongside Elizabeth Stanton, she helped bring about a plethora of achievements such as establishing the Women’s New York State Temperance Society, forming the American Equal Rights Association, which called for the same rights to be granted to all regardless of race or sex, and published the weekly ‘Revolution’, which issued the motto, “Men, their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.”
Susan B. Anthony died in 1906, at the age of 86. She resided in Rochester, New York when she passed away from pneumonia and heart failure. Anthony never married and instead, dedicated her life to women’s rights and equality. She died before women were given the right to vote, but it was with her work and other influential women that the nineteenth amendment was passed 14 years after her death. The amendment was known as the “Susan B. Anthony Amendment” to honor all that she had done with the hope of achieving women’s suffrage one day.
Sojourner Truth and Susan B. Anthony are recognized as two of the most significant social activists in history. Sojourner and Susan had similar beliefs and it was due to their efforts that society had improved remarkably, regarding issues of equality and slavery. These two women were able to voice their opinions and move people with their words and actions. They knew each other and had disagreements but despite their differences, they wanted and fought for the same rights. Truth and Anthony were not the only social activists who affected history. Countless people all over the world fought and are still fighting against the wrongs within society. Social activists are an important part of communication within humankind. They have been and always will be a crucial part of understanding one another throughout the past and present.
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