Narrative of Sojourner Truth, “Washington Streetcar System,” (1881)

Summary

Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Bomfree in Ulster County, New York, in 1797. Enslaved by a Dutch family, her first language was Dutch, and Truth spoke English with a Dutch accent all her life. In 1827, she fled to an abolitionist family who eventually purchased her freedom. Truth thereafter sued for return of her son, who had been sold illegally into slavery and taken to Alabama. In 1843, she had a religious conversion, changed her name to Sojourner Truth, and embarked on a tour as a public speaker and advocate for abolition and women’s rights. This narrative of Truth and the streetcar reflects beliefs of many African Americans who understood freedom to include freedom from the indignities of Jim Crow, and who were willing to risk their safety and very lives for that freedom.

Selected by

Allen C. Guelzo

Director, Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship, James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University

Darrell A.H. Miller

Melvin G. Shimm Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law

Document Excerpt

While Sojourner was engaged in the hospital, she often had occasion to procure articles from various parts of the city for the sick soldiers, and would sometimes be obliged to walk a long distance, carrying her burdens upon her arm. She would gladly have availed herself of the street cars; but, although there was on each track one car called the Jim Crow car, nominally for the accommodation of colored people, yet should they succeed in getting on at all they would seldom have more than the privilege of standing, as the seats were usually filled with white folks. Unwilling to submit to this state of things, she complained to the president of the street railroad, who ordered the Jim Crow car to be taken off. A law was now passed giving the colored people equal car privileges with the white.

Not long after this, Sojourner, having occasion to ride, signaled the car, but neither conductor nor driver noticed her. Soon another followed, and she raised her hand again, but they also turned away. She then gave three tremendous yelps, “I want to ride! I want to ride!! I want to ride!!!" Consternation seized the passing crowd—people, carriages, gocarts of every description stood still. The car was effectually blocked up, and before it could move on, Sojourner had jumped aboard…  The angry conductor told her to go forward where the horses were, or he would put her out. Quietly seating herself, she informed him that she was a passenger. “Go forward where the horses are, or I will throw you out,” said he in a menacing voice. She told him that she was neither a Marylander nor a Virginian to fear his threats; but was from the Empire State of New York, and knew the laws as well as he did.