Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree around 1797 in New York to Dutch slaveowners, the Hardenberghs. Overcoming the challenges of slavery, illiteracy, poverty, prejudice, and sexism in her own lifetime, she worked for freedom, to end racism by mobilizing thousands to support the abolition of slavery and support women's suffrage.
In honor of Black Poetry Day, today's post shares a poem written by Litha Sovell of the Green Belt Movement in Tanzania. The holiday was enacted to celebrate Jupiter Hammon who is considered the first published black poet in the United states, born on the 17th of October 1711.
Wangari Maathai was born April 1, 1940 in a traditional mud-walled house with no electricity or running water. She was the first woman from Africa honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 and the first woman in East and Central African to earn a doctorate degree.
Helen Keller, whose name means light was born June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She lost her vision and became mute February 1882 and later worked on behalf of the blind, campaigning that the major cause of blindness in infants was a condition called ophthalma neonatarum.
