Dr. Michelle Chresfield

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151 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2025 last heard May 2025

Dr. Michelle Chresfield’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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You're Dead to Me · Sojourner Truth: American abolitionist, suffragist, preacher · 28 Feb 2025 podcast

But she has these strong feelings of fairness and wanting to do right by him. These are feelings that she would later forget. kind of narrate. And so she sets a time. She works into the autumn of 1826. And so she spends 100 pounds of wool by hand in addition to doing much of this outside labor. And she's beginning to turn that wool into yarn that could be used for these various projects.

And then she decides that now is the time.

Yes. So she takes her infant daughter, Sophia, and she would later say, I did not run away because I thought that wicked. I walked away because I thought that was all right. And in walks she did, about 13 miles. I calculated, apparently, that's a little over 21 kilometers for our adherence to the metric system.

She goes and she takes refuge with a family, the Van Wagenens, who are anti-slavery, have a strong opposition to slavery, and they take in Isabella and her infant daughter. And it's, I'm sure, a hard decision. She leaves her children and her husband behind with Dumont in order to make this break and to self-emancipate.

So John Dumont eventually tracks her down. He does. He comes to the Van Wagenens and they implore him to sell Isabella and Sophia to them. And so they pay Dumont $25, $20 for Isabella and $5 for Sophia, settling the debt and essentially securing the freedom for both mother and child in a gesture of how much

this would mean to her, that the Van Wagenens would do this, Isabella actually takes their surname. So she becomes Isabella Van Wagenen.

Yes, so her five-year-old son is sold, and not only is he sold, he's sold south to Alabama, which lives in the mind of many enslaved people as the worst place that you want to be enslaved. You do not want to be sold down south. The conditions are arduous and dangerous and violent, and it breaks the spirit. So Isabella is very concerned about her son. She gets lawyers, and she sues.

Not only does she sue Getney—so her son is sold to a man called Solomon Getney— for participating in the illegal sale of her son, because New York state law prevents the sale of a person who would be free in a place where they cannot ever be free, right? So by going to Alabama, he's never going to be emancipated. And she sues Albany Supreme Court for allowing the sale to happen.

So she sues the man and the state, and she is victorious. So in 1828, the judge rules, quote, the boy be delivered into the hands of his mother, having no other master, no other controller, no other conductor but his mother. And she becomes and bringing the suit, the first black woman to win a legal victory against a white man to secure a family member's freedom.

So this is hugely, hugely historic. And we owe a lot to the archives. So the New York archive discovered records only a few years ago in 2022 that give us much more information about the case, including the fact that Isabella was allowed to give a deposition, which is very uncommon for black Americans in the court. at the time.

And Getney, we know from these archival records, was prosecuted for kidnapping and only returned Peter to avoid indictment. And the records also allow us to understand that the young Peter was returned to his mother badly beaten and abused. And so it's definitely a story of celebration, but also there's hardship.

But I'm really excited about what people might be able to glean now that we have these records.

Not that I know of. I'm not sure. But, you know, she's a multilingual woman. So who knows?

Yes, that's absolutely right. So the La Tourette's are as religious as they are wealthy, we could say. And they're followers of a religion that would come to be known as perfectionism.

That's why I never get anything done. And so perfectionism is closely tied to the Pentecostal tradition, which I think, Desiree, some of this is going to resonate with you. So it's about spreading the gospel, living plainly, speaking in tongues, singing hymns, seeking miracles, fasting. washing each other's feet.

And so the Lattarets began this holy club, which is essentially a church that they hold in their home. And they also minister in the community amongst some of the most downtrodden, prisoners, prostitutes. And Isabella begins to preach with this club as well. And she also works in the field. She begins to really craft her oratory style and

her spiritual conviction at this moment in a really amazing way. She becomes a housekeeper for Elijah Pearson, who is a successful businessman who would become a leading religious reformer.

And Pearson would claim to be a prophet, and he believed that he could cure illness and prevent death, so much so that when his wife Sarah died, likely the result of the extreme fasting that the community had been engaged in, he attempted to pray her back to life, right? So Isabella, yes, is enmeshed in a society of deep religious devotion.

Not at all. She is so convinced that she wept for joy and kissed his feet. Okay.

Oh, man. It didn't hurt that he styles his hair and clothing to look like those chromatic images of Jesus that were circulating at the time. So he's very much trying to play the part.

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