She was born Isabella Baumfree, enslaved in Ulster County, New York, around 1797. She was sold at auction at age nine, along with a flock of sheep, for $100. She was sold twice more before she escaped in 1826, walking away with her infant daughter, one year before New York’s emancipation law took effect. [1]
Her five-year-old son Peter had been illegally sold to a slaveholder in Alabama. She went to court. A Black woman in 1828, in a nation that considered her property, walked into a courthouse and demanded the return of her child. She won. She was among the first Black women in the United States to prevail in such a case. [1]
In 1843, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth because, she said, the Spirit called her to travel and speak the truth. She became one of the most powerful orators in American history — illiterate, six feet tall, with a voice that witnesses said could silence a room of hundreds. [1]
She understood something about power that most of her contemporaries missed: the image. She was one of the first Americans to grasp the commercial and political potential of photographic self-portraiture. She copyrighted her own likeness — circumventing the convention that gave photographers ownership of their subjects’ images — and had printed on her cartes de visite: “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance.” [1][2]
A formerly enslaved woman, controlling the means of her own representation, profiting from her own image, and using the revenue to fund abolitionist and suffrage campaigns. She sold the photographs at speaking engagements and by mail, as others might sell pamphlets. [2]
She met Abraham Lincoln at the White House in 1864. She helped recruit Black troops for the Union Army. She petitioned Congress for land grants for former slaves. She fought for women’s suffrage when some of her abolitionist allies told her to wait her turn. She did not wait. [1]
She died in Battle Creek, Michigan, on November 26, 1883. She was approximately eighty-six years old. Approximately — because the system that enslaved her did not care when she was born.
Bibliography
[1] Wikipedia. “Sojourner Truth.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth [2] Smithsonian Magazine. “How Sojourner Truth Used Photography to Help End Slavery.” July 2016. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-sojourner-truth-used-photography-help-end-slavery-180959952/