Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 19 February 2004 — Page 16

Page 16 • The Muncie Times • February 19, 2004

Sojourne Truth battled slavery, fought for women’s rights

By Reasons and Patrick The Lord gave me Sojourner because I was to travel up and down the land showing the people their sins and being a sign unto them. “Afterwards, I told the Lord I wanted another name, cause everybody else had two names; and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth unto the people.” Thus in the year 1843, Isabella Baumfree-an illiterate, former slave, emerged on the national scene as Sojourner Truth. For almost 40 years. Sojourner traveled and talked and exerted a strong influence on two important issues of the day: abolition and womenis rights. She turned up regularly at abolition and

suffrage meetings and argued the cause of equality in her strange, Dutch-slave patois. She was not eloquent, but she was effective. At a suffrage meeting in Akron, Ohio, in 1852, she delivered one of her most widely quoted arguments for equality between the sexes. “Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, am lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar,” she said. iNobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gibs me any best place. “And ain’t I a woman?” In the same vein, Sojourner proceeded to demolish the male argument

about the helplessness of women and the chivalry of men. She bared her muscular arm to the shoulder as evidence that she and other women worked as hard as men yet did not enjoy the same rights. Before she finished, even the male hecklers in the audience were hanging on he every word. Sojourner frequently produced dramatic shifts in the mood of an audience. Negro abolitionist Frederick Douglass once plunged his audience into a gloomy mood by predicting that it would take bloodshed to bring about the end of slavery. Sojourner easily dispelled the gloom by rising and thundering at him: “Frederick, is God

dead?” During the Civil War, Sojourner served as a nurse, and helped resettle the hordes of slaves who fled the South. Once President Lincoln received her at the White House. Sojourner was born near Kingston, N.Y., around 1797 and bor a number of children fathered by a fellow slave. She was owned by several masters before being freed in 1827. After the Civil War, Sojourner settled in Battle Creek, Mich., but continued to speak on temperance and other subjects until near the end of her life. “People ask me,” she once said in her later years, “how I come to live so long an’ keep my mind; an’ I tell them it is because I think of the great things of God, not

DREW CREATED BLOOD BANK

Dr. Charles Richard Drew lived a short life but he left mankind an important legacy-the blood bank. A pioneer in blood research, Dr. Drew introduced the use of plasma on the battlefield, organized the world's first mass blood bank project, Blood for Britain, and established the

American Red Cross Blood Bank, of which he was the first director. How many lives have been saved as a direct result of his work can be only a matter of conjecture, but the figure for World War II alone would be in the ten of thousands. Charles Drew's early years gave no hint of his scientific bent. He was a top athlete, an ordinary scholar. Born and educated in Washington, D.C., Drew was a four-letter man in sports and was best allaround athlete in both his junior and senior years at Dunbar High. At Amherst College, he was a track and football star and winner of the Mossman Trophy as the athlete who brought the greatest honor to his school. Drew finished at Amherst in 1926 and

enrolled at McGill University Medical School in Montreal where his books began to take on more importance. He won two fellowships and was awarded his M.D. and Master of Surgery degrees, with top honors. After interning in Canada, Dr. Drew returned home and joined the faculty of Howard University. In 1938, as war clouds gathered over Europe, Dr. Drew left Howard to study at New York City's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center on a Rockefeller fellowship. At the medical center, he established one of the nation's first blood banks, a pilot project on which he based his doctoral thesis and earned the degree of Doctor of Medical Science. Dr. Drew solved a number of technical

problems connected with the storage and preservation of whole blood and his research established that plasma would serve as an effective substitute under emergency conditions. His research also won him a reputation as a leading authority in the field and led to his selection as organizer of Blood for Britain and then the American Red Cross Blood Bank. The latter was functioning smoothly when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, but Dr. Drew was no longer in charge. In response to an armed forces dictum that only Caucasian blood would be acceptable. Dr. Drew called a press conference and spoke “not as a Negro but as a scientist.” “I will not give you an opinion.” he told reporters. “I will give you

the little things.” Sojourner’s faith in God never wavered. She held no fear of the hereafter. “I isn’t going to die, honey,” she once said. ‘T’s goin” home like a shootin’ star.” Sojourner died in Battle Creek in 1883 and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.

scientific facts. The blood of individual human beings may differ by blood groupings, but there is absolutely no scientific basis to indicate any difference according to race.” Dr. Drew resigned several weeks later and returned to Washington with his wife and three daughters. He rejoined the Howard facultyand gained new prominence as head of the university's department of surgery, and as chief surgeon, chief of staff and medical director of Freedman's Hospital. In 1950, Dr. Drew was on his way to a medical meeting when his car overturned. He was killed in the accident at the age of 45.