Sojourner Truth: First Step to Freedom at City Hall

Through a partnership with the City of Kingston and SUNY New Paltz, Sojourner Truth: First Step to Freedom will be on display at Kingston City Hall from Saturday, September 28, 2024 to August 2025. Renowned sculptor Trina Greene’s bronze statue of "Isabella" (later Sojourner Truth), depicted in 1826 as she is walking to freedom carrying her daughter, Sophia, will be on display in the foyer at City Hall. The statue captures Truth’s escape from enslavement and the beginning of her heroic journey to advocate for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery.

On Saturday, September 28, the installation will open with a public viewing of the statue on the first floor at City Hall starting at 5:00pm. Programming will be held at the City Hall Council Chambers featuring renowned actress Aixa Kendrick portraying Sojourner Truth, the Center for Creative Education Dancers and Drummers, historian Anne Gordon, the Women's Drumsong Orchestra, SUNY Black Studies Chair Dr Weldon McWilliams, Ulster County Poet Laureate Kate Hymes, Maxwell Kofi Donker, and more.

During the opening reception, original court documents will be on display that outline the story of Sojourner Truth returning to Ulster County to secure the return of her 5-year-old son, Peter, who had been illegally sold to a plantation in Alabama. With the help of local attorneys, she filed a Habeas Corpus Petition in the Ulster County Courthouse in March of 1828. She ultimately prevailed on the petition for her son’s freedom, marking the first time in American history that a Black woman sued a white man and won.

The Sojourner Truth: First Step to Freedom statue can be viewed at Kingston City hall during regular business hours (Monday to Friday from 8:30am-4:30pm) from September 30, 2024, until August 2025 or by appointment.

The City of Kingston’s Department of Arts & Cultural Affairs will host group tours, artists talks, and programming throughout the installation that will contextualize the artwork and Sojourner Truth’s legacy.

After the Kingston installation, the statue will tour other regional locations, to be announced, before its permanent installation on the SUNY New Paltz campus.

The Sojourner Truth: First Step to Freedom event is sponsored by the City of Kingston, SUNY New Paltz, Kingston’s Department of Arts & Cultural Affairs, Ulster County Tourism, Ulster Savings Bank, and Tilda’s Kitchen and Market. Special thanks to the Kingston Police Department Color Guard, the NYS Archives, and the Radio Kingston tech team.

About the Artist:

Trina Greene received her training at the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, graduating with honors in Painting. However, she soon became drawn to sculpture and commenced to experiment in three dimensions, inventing for herself a way of building large clay volumes that were eventually cast into bronze. Recent commissions include a bronze of Sojourner Truth as an 11 yr. old slave for the Sojourner Truth Park in Esopus and the Poorhouse Monument, (a life sized) Aging Woman representing 2,300 paupers in a mass burial ground of unmarked graves where the Ulster County Fairgrounds and swimming pool now are, which was commissioned by the Ulster County Legislature.

Greene's work has been shown and collected across the country, and can locally be seen in the permanent collection of Albany Institute of History and Science. And in Orange County State Park, NY where her large work in bronze of the god PAN is the focal point of a Shakespearean Garden. She lives and works in New Paltz, New York.