Despite this announcement, the Battle Creek Daily Journal revealed that there were questions about the arrangement of Sojourner Truth\u2019s funeral. Also writing on the day of her death, the Journal editor affirmed that the funeral would take place on Wednesday, November 28, but stated that the \u201cplace and hour will be announced to-morrow.\u201d The next day, Battle Creek residents learned that the location and officiant had changed; the funeral would now be in \u201cthe Congregational and Presbyterian church, Rev. Reed Stuart officiating.\u201d And that is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n
The precise details of this abrupt funeral switch are lost, but the broader picture seems clear: some of those closest to the iconic activist were carefully curating her image and legacy. Throughout her life, Truth had remained religiously independent, and it was probably supposed that a close affiliation with any specific denomination would limit her post-death influence. As a result, the Reverend Stuart, who had recently become an independent minister, seemed a better choice for some.<\/p>\n
Truth\u2019s relationship with Adventists had grown steadily after she moved to the Battle Creek area in 1857. This was particularly true after 1875. Early in that year, the Review and Herald publishing house offered to print a new edition of Truth\u2019s biography, and by 1884 it had printed the last four editions of her autobiography, though it was not credited as the printer until the final edition.<\/p>\n
After 1875, published records from the period show that Truth occasionally lectured in the Adventist church, college, and sanitarium in Battle Creek. After John Harvey Kellogg cut off some of his own skin and grafted it onto Truth\u2019s body in a novel procedure calculated to heal her ulcerated leg, Truth gratefully remarked that the Adventists had \u201clengthened her days.\u201d During her last illness, Kellogg and his medical team continued to care for Truth daily, and after her death, the Sanitarium proudly displayed the famous painting of Sojourner Truth with Abraham Lincoln until the sanitarium was destroyed by fire.<\/p>\n
Numerous Adventist residents in Battle Creek later claimed that Truth regularly attended the Dime Tabernacle. Though it is doubtful that this happened \u201cfor more than a quarter of a century,\u201d as one local historian claimed in the 1970s, it was probably true near the end of Truth\u2019s life. The strongest surviving evidence comes from the testimony of James Hannibal Lewis, a black Adventist barber and resident of Battle Creek for more than sixty years. In the mid-1950s, James E Dykes, a writer for Message magazine who spent about two years interviewing those who had known Truth, talked with Lewis. Now in his late eighties or early nineties, Lewis stated, \u201cI recall that Sojourner Truth was baptised by Uriah Smith, in the Kalamazoo River, at the end of Cass Street.\u201d Understandably, many have doubted this account because it was published about seventy-five years after the purported incident and is not substantiated by written sources from the 1880s.<\/p>\n Though the question cannot be definitively settled without contemporary documentation, some evidence seems to support Lewis\u2019s claim. First, as Louis B Reynolds noted in his earlier research, members of the Gage, Smith, Price, and Paulson families confirmed Lewis\u2019s account, asserting that Truth was a good Adventist. Second, we can understand how Truth\u2019s baptism could fit contextually, as it would explain why Uriah Smith had been originally asked to conduct the funeral in the Dime Tabernacle. Third, we can confirm that Lewis remembered the correct baptismal location. According to James White, Battle Creek Adventists typically baptised people in the Kalamazoo River, and by 1878, more than one thousand Adventists had been baptised there. Fourth, we can document that Lewis lived in Battle Creek during the last months of Truth\u2019s life, which supports the common interpretation of Dykes\u2019 interview of Lewis that his recollection was an eyewitness account. But he was neither a child nor in his early twenties as has been previously assumed. Born on January 15, 1865, Lewis was in his late teens when he lived in the South Hall boarding house and attended Battle Creek College in the early 1880s. Finally, we can show that Lewis did not wait seventy-five years to reveal his knowledge of Truth\u2019s baptism. Rather, he devoted much of his life to the preservation of Truth\u2019s legacy and shared his memories of the Adventist Truth frequently with those who visited Battle Creek.<\/p>\n Lewis\u2019 first wife died in 1926, and two years later, he married Alice Beatrice Turner. Alice was a civil rights activist, and in the late 1920s, she co-founded the Sojourner Truth Memorial Association. She served as president of this association until her untimely death in 1943, and its meetings were typically held in the Lewis home at 77 Wilkes Avenue in Battle Creek. Under her leadership, Alice actively collected written materials and living memory statements about Truth, organised programs and mass meetings devoted to promoting Truth\u2019s legacy, attempted to place a biography of Truth in every black school in America, and actively raised funds to erect a new monument for Truth in Battle Creek. Unfortunately, the Great Depression halted Alice\u2019s efforts, and she did not live to see her dream fulfilled. Three years after her death, a marble monument much smaller than she had envisioned replaced the deteriorating tombstone that Titus had erected. That monument still stands today.<\/p>\n Under Alice\u2019s leadership, the Lewises also inaugurated the still-practised Adventist tradition of visiting Truth\u2019s gravesite, which lies near that of Ellen G White and her family. Beginning in the late 1920s, the Lewises led countless visitors to the Oak Hill Cemetery and, in front of Truth\u2019s monument, informed their audiences that she had been baptised into the Adventist Church and regularly attended Tabernacle services. Such visits were occasionally newsworthy, like the delegation of three hundred Adventists from the Lake Union in 1932. In covering this event, the Moon-Journal reported that Truth was an \u201cadherent to the Adventist faith\u201d, and the Chicago Defender noted that as the Adventists placed \u201cwreaths upon the graves of several outstanding denominational leaders, they lingered long to eulogize the memory of this great woman.\u201d Though James Lewis\u2019s memory of Truth\u2019s baptism was not printed until 1958, this information was widely disseminated long before that time.<\/p>\n James Lewis\u2019s frequently recalled memory has credibility. Though Sojourner Truth\u2019s faith was too eclectic to be considered exclusively Adventist despite her probable baptism, it is crucial that we uphold the Adventist Truth. Truth remains a powerful symbol of anti-racism, women\u2019s rights, and God-ordained equity, and the Adventist Truth has rallied and strengthened many church members in the cause of social justice for almost one hundred and fifty years. If we do not intentionally and persistently fight against racism both within and outside of the Adventist Church, we will forget the Adventist Truth and fail to live it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Publication note: This commentary was first published by the Lake Union Herald and is republished here with permission. An extended version, including footnoted sources, is available on the Lake Union Herald website<\/a>.<\/p>\n [Photos: Randall Studio<\/a> and unknown photographer<\/a>, via World History Encyclopedia]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How one activist\u2019s story intersects with Adventist history<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":25601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25598"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25617,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25598\/revisions\/25617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Sojourner](\"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2_Sojourner-Truth.jpg\")
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Kevin-M-Burton-Small.jpg\")
Kevin M Burton<\/strong> is Assistant Professor of Church History and Director of the Center for Adventist Research at Andrews University, USA. His first book, Apocalyptic Abolitionism: How Millennialists Helped Abolish Slavery and Reform America, was published by New York University Press in 2026.<\/p>\n