What you should know
- In recognition of Black History Month and Women’s History Month, Governor Kathy Hochul announced Monday that a new state park will be named after Sojourner Truth, who was a 19th-century African-American woman, abolitionist, suffragette and women’s rights activist
- The park is planned for more than 500 acres of former industrial property along the Hudson River waterfront in Ulster County and will be the first state park in the city of Kingston and the first new state park to open since July 2019. .
- For more information on New York State Parks go to this website.
—
In recognition of Black History Month and Women’s History Month, Governor Kathy Hochul announced Monday that a new state park will be named after Sojourner Truth, who was a 19th-century African-American woman, abolitionist, suffragette and women’s rights activist
The park is planned for more than 500 acres of former industrial property along the Hudson River waterfront in Ulster County and will be the first state park in the city of Kingston and the first new state park to open since July 2019. .
“It suits such a magnificent property with its bluffs and Hudson’s shoreline named after a remarkable woman who began her life right here in Ulster County,” Governor Hochul said. “New York is committed to reflecting the diverse stories of its people, like Sojourner Truth and her message of freedom and equality, who have influenced our state’s inspiring history.”
Truth was born a slave in 1797 in Esopus, Ulster County under the name Isabella “Bomefree” Baumfree and was freed from slavery in 1826, a year before legal slavery ended in New York. In 1828, she won a lawsuit to regain custody of her son, who had been sold into slavery in the Deep South, marking one of the first legal cases in which an African-American woman prevailed in court against a person. White.
Following her deeply held religious views, she traveled as a traveling preacher, speaking the “truth” to the harsh inequalities that people of color and women endure while calling for systemic change. Renaming herself Sojourner Truth, she became one of the nation’s leading voices for abolition and universal suffrage in the mid-19th century. During the Civil War, she recruited men for the Union Army and worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau, an agency that helped newly freed enslaved.
After the war, he continued to advocate for universal voting rights. Sojourner Truth died in 1883, after African-American men had received the vote, but the national adoption of women’s suffrage was still four decades away.
In August 2020, New York State Parks installed a statue of her at the western entrance to the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park in Highland, Ulster County, and dedicated the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in a ceremony attended by one of his descendants.
State Parks partnered with nonprofit environmental group Scenic Hudson to protect land for this new park that had previously been slated for large-scale private development. Funding for State Parks’ $13.5 million purchase was provided through the state’s Environmental Protection Fund. About three quarters of the property is in Kingston and the rest in Ulster.
State Parks will install limited parking and hiking trails to provide public access for passive recreation this spring. Until then, except for Hudson River Brickyard Trail, the property is not open to the public. Scenic Hudson has already completed a comprehensive study of the property’s ecological, geological and cultural resources.
Under an agreement, State Parks, Scenic Hudson and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission will collaborate and solicit public input on how Sojourner Truth State Park will be developed. Scenic Hudson, which will operate the park under a five-year agreement, has already held public meetings on the topic, and the partners will announce more meetings in the future.
For more information on New York State Parks go to this website.
–
