Sojourner Truth, her vegetarian Adventist friends, & the White lady
Merritt Clifton posted: " At her death, Adventist vegetarian prophet Ellen White was Sojourner Truth's oldest friend BATTLE CREEK, Michigan––Was Sojourner Truth a vegetarian, perhaps even a vegan? The possibility exists––and is perhaps even a likelihood––that Sojourner Tru"
At her death, Adventist vegetarian prophet Ellen White was Sojourner Truth's oldest friend
BATTLE CREEK, Michigan––Was Sojourner Truth a vegetarian, perhaps even a vegan?
The possibility exists––and is perhaps even a likelihood––that Sojourner Truth, a longtime anti-slavery abolitionist, and campaigner for women's rights and abstinence from alcohol, may have become vegetarian late in life, possibly as early as mid-life, through the influence of fellow anti-slavery activists Horace Greeley, Sylvester Graham, John Harvey Kellogg, and Ellen White.
All four were longtime personal friends of Sojourner Truth, committed to all the same causes, often sharing podiums with her. All were committed vegetarians as well.
Kellogg, and White, like Sojourner Truth, also were also longtime leaders of the Adventist movement, ancestral to the Seventh Day Adventist church of today.
Afro-Vegan Society founders.
Sojourner Truth left no direct record of vegetarian advocacy
Among the three of them, only Sojourner Truth left no direct record of vegetarian advocacy. But as Sojourner Truth was illiterate. Though a fluent speaker in both Dutch and English, Sojourner Truth had much less opportunity than Kellogg and White to write for publication and engage in correspondence that might have left a detailed record of her dietary beliefs and habits.
Hints that Sojourner Truth may have become vegetarian long before her death in 1883 began surfacing about three weeks after Afro-Vegan Society founder Brenda Sanders, of Baltimore, Maryland, on February 1, 2024 commenced the organization's fourth annual Veguary campaign, "providing culturally relevant content on plant-based eating during Black History Month."
Unfortunately, having not received the Afro-Vegan Society's announcement of Veguary 2024 until February 16, ANIMALS 24-7 missed the opportunity to herald it, as we did for the 2021, 2022, and 2023 editions.
Instead, between pursuing a multitude of other current topics, ANIMALS 24-7 frustratedly looked for another angle and opportunity to encourage Veguary.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Seeking the truth about Sojourner Truth
Finally, more than three weeks into Veguary and Black History Month, Chris Klimek, host of the National Public Radio program "There's More to That," devoted his February 22, 2024 broadcast to discovering the truth about Sojourner Truth, who lived from approximately 1797 to November 26, 1883, but was reputedly as old as 109 at her death.
Born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York, a Dutch-settled community, Sojourner Truth for the first third of her life was named Isabella Baumfree.
Sojourner Truth spoke only Dutch until she was sold with a herd of goats at age nine. Sexually abused, she bore at least five children, passing through several more owners before earning her freedom; was cheated by her last owner, who sought to keep her; and finally escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826.
William Miller. (Wikipedia photo)
Became anti-slavery evangelist in middle age
After New York state abolished slavery a year later, Sojourner Truth in 1828 sued successfully to recover a son who had been illegally sold into slavery in Alabama. This made her apparently the first African-American woman to win a case against a white man.
Sojourner Truth was already in her mid-forties when on June 1, 1843, Pentecost Sunday, she changed her name and began her career as an anti-slavery evangelist.
Her route up the Connecticut River Valley into Massachusetts brought her into association with William Miller (1782-1849), a fellow itinerant evangelist who preached that Jesus would appear at some point in 1843-1844, bringing about the Last Judgement.
Ellen G. White.
Ellen Gould Harmon, later Ellen G. White
Joining the Millerites, as they were called, also brought Sojourner Truth into a 40-year friendship with Ellen Gould Harmon, then only in her early teens, whose parents––either actual or adoptive––were also committed Millerites.
Ellen Gould Harmon, after marriage to minister James White (1821-1881) in 1846, became much better known as the Seventh Day Adventist prophet and evangelist Ellen White.
White, throughout her life (1827-1915) was rumored to be herself of African-American descent, as photographs certainly suggest.
Adventist clergyman and civil rights leader Charles E. Dudley Sr. (1927-2010), argued that White was indeed at least partially of African-American ancestry in a 1999 book entitled The Genealogy of Ellen Gould Harmon White: The Prophetess of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the Story of the Growth and Development of the Seventh-day Adventist Denomination as It Relates to African-Americans.
Charles E. Dudley. (Photo courtesy of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists Archives.)
"Continued to fight on behalf of women & African-Americans until her death"
The Ellen G. White Estate responded in March 2000 by commissioning genealogist Roger D. Joslyn to establish her Anglo-Saxon ancestry, but only DNA research could actually prove the truth of the matter.
Sojourner Truth left the Millerite sect after his prophecies of the Second Coming failed. Relocating in 1856 to Battle Creek, Michigan, James and Ellen White rebuilt the sect into the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
As orator and renowned singer of hymns, Sojourner Truth "continued to fight on behalf of women and African-Americans until her death," Wikipedia summarizes.
Sylvester Graham.
Sylvester Graham, the cracker man
That brought Sojourner Truth to the notice and eventually to some of the same lecture platforms as Sylvester Graham (1794-1851).
Sylvester Graham was a Presbyterian minister and temperance crusader, remembered today for inventing the Graham cracker as an alleged cure for lust.
Sylvester Graham had become a vegetarian circa 1826 under the influence of the Reverend William Metcalfe, founder of the first vegetarian church in Philadelphia.
Metcalfe had been a member of the first vegetarian church in England, the Bible Christian Church founded by William Cowherd near Manchester in 1809. Cowherd is also remembered for leading opposition to slavery and cruel punishments.
New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley.
Horace Greeley & the Alcotts
Sylvester Graham's followers included William Alcott, M.D., the first of several prominent vegetarians in the Alcott family, cousin of Amos Bronson Alcott (1789-1888), the abolitionist and advocate for women's rights who became father of Little House series author Louisa May Alcott.
Other Graham followers were New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley (1811-1872); and James and Ellen White.
Two other Graham associates, John Harvey Kellogg, M.D. (1854-1941) and his brother William K. Kellogg (1860-1951), started out trying to adapt Graham's theories about grain-based foods to produce products other than crackers.
George Washington Carver. (Beth Clifton collage)
Corn flakes, granola, & soy milk
The Kellogg brothers, especially William, went on to invent and popularize peanut butter––with the help of George Washington Carver––along with corn flakes, granola, and soy milk.
C.W. Post (1854-1914), founder of the Post breakfast cereal empire, after attending the Kellogg sanitarium in Battle Creek following a mental breakdown, became a leader of the next generation of vegetarian food activists.
All of that, though, was still far in the future when Sojourner Truth stumped for the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage (meaning the right to vote), and Christian temperance during the 20 years preceding the U.S. Civil War.
Nell Painter, Sojourner Truth biographer. (Wikipedia photo)
"Sojourner Truth embodied a fact that still bears repeating"
Notice of Sojourner Truth by Sylvester Graham brought notice and promotion by Horace Greeley, which in turn brought Sojourner Truth a nationally recognized voice.
Sojourner Truth repaid the favor by campaigning vigorously for Greeley when he ran for U.S. President as a third party candidate in 1872, losing in a landslide to the Republican nominee, former Civil War commanding general Ulysses S. Grant.
"At a time when most Americans thought of slaves as male and women as white," wrote Sojourner Truth biographer Nell Irvin Painter, "Sojourner Truth embodied a fact that still bears repeating: Among the blacks are women; among the women, there are blacks."
Dr. Cynthia R. Greenlee. (Cynthiagreenlee.com photo)
"We can use her in a lot of different ways."
Chris Klimek brought both Nell Irvin Painter and fellow Sojourner Truth biographer Cynthia Greenlee into the National Public Radio discussion.
Sojourner Truth, observed Greenlee, "was an abolitionist. She was a woman who believed in suffrage. She was a woman who was the foremother of feminism and particularly African-American feminism.
"So we can use her in a lot of different ways. It is not uncommon for social justice or social movement folk to pick the thing that most aligns with their goals, their agenda, and their movement. And so I think that really happens to her."
Mentioned Chris Klimek, "Sojourner Truth spent the last 20 or so years of her life in Battle Creek, Michigan."
Reminded Nell Painter, "Remember that Battle Creek is the home of the Seventh Day Adventist church."
John Harvey Kellogg with cockatoo.
John Harvey Kellogg
Said Chris Klimek, "It was also home to a particular Seventh Day Adventist named John Harvey Kellogg."
Explained Nell Painter, "Dr. Kellogg had his sanitarium, and people came to get better. You had to be a vegetarian, no caffeine, no smoking, no alcohol and so forth. So one of the people who came was C.W. Post, who was already a wealthy person, and he came, and it worked for him. And so he started producing cereals and foods and so forth."
That seemed to suggest an angle for ANIMALS 24-7 coverage of Veguary.
ANIMALS 24-7 emailed to Nell Painter, seeking further particulars as to whether Sojourner Truth might have become vegetarian in Battle Creek.
But, responded Nell Painter, "With regrets, I'm not able to answer your query regarding Sojourner Truth's eating habits. I do know that she smoked tobacco until late in her life."
Sojourner Truth.
Sojourner Truth spoke at 1853 "Vegetarian Festival"
ANIMALS 24-7, in extensive searching at NewspaperArchive.com, found no explicit mention of Sojourner Truth as a vegetarian, or indeed of her eating anything.
This would seem to suggest that whatever Sojourner Truth ate, and whatever her beliefs were about diet, was not remarkable enough for journalists to mention, even in marveling at her health and strength at what was widely believed to be an even more extremely advanced age than Sojourner Truth actually lived to be.
Yet a periodical entitled The Anti-Slavery Bugle on September 10, 1853 described a "Vegetarian Festival" in New York City, hosted by Horace Greeley, at which Sojourner Truth spoke during a Sunday afternoon session alongside William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), remembered as publisher of the anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator (1831-1865).
Sojourner Truth apparently dealt much more effectively with "rowdies" favoring slavery than did the Sunday evening speakers.
The "rowdies" during the evening session disrupted the proceedings until "finally the meeting was compelled by their violence to disperse."
Sojourner Truth with Abraham Lincoln. (Painted by R.D. Bayley in 1864.)
Sojourner Truth in Battle Creek
Then approaching 60 years of age, Sojourner Truth "was too much of a free-spirited seeker to be the exclusive claim of any religious organization," the web page Adventist Peace admits, yet "maintained close ties with Adventists, whom she saw as friends and allies in the struggle for racial justice. Truth moved to Battle Creek, Michigan at about the same time as the Sabbatarian wing of Adventists led by James and Ellen White moved their headquarters there in 1856. She developed relations with the Adventist community that lasted the remainder of her life."
Sojourner Truth in fact followed James and Ellen White to Battle Creek, but only by a matter of months.
According to Roger W. Coon, associate secretary of the Ellen G. White Estate, a 38-year Seventh Day Adventist employee in multiple capacities, Ellen White "did not receive her first vision contraindicating the eating of meat in general and pork in particular until June 6, 1863.
Afro-Vegan Society cofounder Brenda Sanders. (Facebook photo)
"I will eat simple food, or I will not eat at all"
"Mrs. White's personal response was prompt and positive: 'I accepted the light on health reform as it came to me. I at once cut meat out of my bill of fare. I broke away from everything at once."
"But all of this did not come without a struggle," the Reverend Coon wrote. "In 1870, recounting this struggle, she said: 'I suffered keen hunger. I was a great meat eater. But when faint, I placed my arms across my stomach, and said: "I will not taste a morsel. I will eat simple food, or I will not eat at all."
Ellen White preached vegetarianism for the last 52 years of her 88-year life, establishing vegetarianism as the preferred died for Seventh Day Adventists, taking up antivivisectionism as well in 1894.
John Harvey Kellogg. (Beth Clifton collage)
Adventists helped Sojourner Truth in old age
Of Ellen White's close friend and neighbor Sojourner Truth, Seventh Day Adventist historian Kevin Burton mentions, "After 1875, published records from the period show that Sojourner Truth," at least 76 then, "occasionally lectured in the Adventist church, college and sanitarium in Battle Creek.
"By 1882, she had grown still closer to Adventists, particularly with the doctors and nurses in the sanitarium who regularly cared for her.
"Numerous Adventists visited Truth in her home throughout her years in Battle Creek."
John Harvey Kellogg himself "cut off some of his own skin and grafted it onto Truth's body in a novel procedure calculated to heal her ulcerated leg," Burton writes.
"Truth gratefully remarked that the Adventists had 'lengthened her days.' During her last illness, Kellogg and his medical team continued to care for Truth daily," according to Burton.
Beth & Merritt Clifton.
Was Sojourner Truth ever actually vegetarian by choice?
This we cannot know. But Sojourner Truth did closely associate herself with vegetarians for most of the latter half of her life, and would have received vegetarian meals from the Kellogg sanitarium, making her at least a quasi-vegetarian, whether or not she wished to be one.
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