When Words Seemed Weaker Than Whips: So Tall Within: Sojourner Truth's Long Walk Toward Freedom by Gary D. Schmidt

IN SLAVERY TIME WHEN HOPE WAS A SEED....

... a little slave girl was born in New York State, one of many children, most sold to work far away. Nine-year-old Isabella, too, was sold, along with a flock of sheep, for one hundred dollars. Mama Bett told her to remember that her family all looked to the same stars at night. Isabella looked at those stars ...

... and she asked God "if He thought it was right."

Isabella knew nothing but long days of hard work, but she grew strong and tall, and just before slavery became illegal in New York, she left with her youngest, Baby Sophia, and took refuge with an anti-slavery family who paid off her angry owner. But to get back her older children, Isabella stood tall and took her case to court and finally won back the custody of her family.

"I felt so tall within," she said. "I felt as if the power of the nation was with me."

Isabella stood tall and walked to New York City, where she managed to unite with some of her sisters, and then she felt a towering desire to help all slaves escape the whip of the owner.

It would be a journey--a sojourn--to tell the truth about slavery.

Isabella changed her name to Sojourner Truth, and she began to walk again.

Sojourner Truth began her long walk through her nation. She spoke powerfully in the non-slave-holding northern states--Massachusetts, Ohio, and Indiana. She walked to Washington, and met President Abraham Lincoln, "the best president who ever took the seat," and stood tall in front of a trolley until it stopped and let her ride. And when the slaves were emancipated and the Civil War was over, she walked with the Freedmen's Bureau to gain education for all freed slaves. Now she knew what she was in this world for.

Sojourner Truth walked all across the United States, delivering powerful speeches.

What she had to say was plenty. She spoke of a woman's right to vote. She spoke about making prisons more humane. She asked the government to offer land to former slaves. She spoke against capital punishment. She walked thousands of miles... and everywhere, she spoke of Freedom.

IN FREEDOM TIME, WHEN HOPE KINDLED A FIRE IN THE DARK AND HAPPINESS WINKED OVER THE HORIZON...

Sojourner Truth, born a slave, uneducated and poor, was a tall woman, still even larger than life in her farseeing dreams for her country, one who casts a very long shadow over human rights for all to this day. Gary D. Schmidt's So Tall Within: Sojourner Truth's Long Walk Toward Freedom (Roaring Brook Press, 2018) is an eloquent picture book depicting the long life of the tall woman who changed her world and helped end legal slavery in America and became an early advocate of women's rights. In vivid descriptions and arresting prose of his own and the poignant words of Sojourner Truth ringing down through the centuries, and perfect for Black History and Women's History months, Gary Schmidt's new book belongs in all libraries for children. Schmidt, twice a Newbery Honor winner and National Book Award finalist (see reviews here), has the added talents of artist Daniel Minter, whose illustrations are lovely, stark, and memorable.

Making A Name for Herself: My Name Is Truth: The Life of Sojourner Truth by Ann Turner

American biography has often celebrated the "self-made man,"
but never was there a noted American who was more of a "self-made woman" than Abolitionist and Women's Rights crusader Sojourner Truth.

Born Isabella Baumfree, not in the cotton fields of the South, but among the Dutch-speaking farmers of New York State, she suffered many of the indignities of slave life--cruel masters, separation from her loved husband and child, and beatings and a forced marriage with another slave of her third master, Mr. DuMont. Bella became her own person when she fled with her youngest child, Sophia, and eventually took her former master to court and won back her son Peter when he was illegally sold into the South. Along the way, she learned English and became a Methodist, and came under the wings of the early Abolitionist leaders.  In 1843 she left her old self behind, name and all.

GOD SPOKE IN MY HEART A NEW NAME THAT FITS ME LIKE A NEW DRESS, JUST MADE FOR ME.

NOW I AM SOJOURNER BECAUSE I TRAVEL FAR AND LONG TO TELL THE NEWS OF GOD'S TRUTH.

A tall, muscular woman with a powerful voice, Sojourner gave voice to the cause of the end of slavery and women's rights for the rest of her life.  She worked with other leaders, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Tubman, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony, speaking for personal rights throughout the country. Sojourner met with presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant to urge full rights for all, and was almost a century ahead of Rosa Parks, taking a seat  and demanding equal rights on the horse-drawn trolleys of Washington, D.C.  In the years after the Civil War, when former slave men were given the right to vote, Sojourner clearly foresaw that true liberty and democracy would never be attained until all women had the same rights as white men.

Born in 1797, Sojourner was not to live to see full rights come to women, but she fully foresaw the rightness and necessity of that outcome, and those who took up her cause continue to gain strength from her vision and determination.

In her  My Name Is Truth: The Life of Sojourner Truth (Harper, 2015), Ann Turner's narration of an extraordinary American life uses many of Sojourner Truth's own words to tell her own story, from her heart to the hearts of young readers.  James Ransome's well-executed illustrations--from young Bella fleeing to freedom with her baby, Isabella sleeping in her first clean white bed as a grown woman, to the well-known Sojourner the civil rights crusader, travelling the nation to take her simple, moving message to her fellow citizens---extend the text well. As Kirkus Reviews says, "Against a white background, the images explode across the pages."

This is a highly recommended book for library biography and civil rights collections, a picture book that introduces one of our nation's one-of-a-kind characters to young readers. For Black History Month, read this one aloud along with Ann Petry's notable Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad.