Sojourner Truth

Slave, Prophet, Legend

Carleton Mabee

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1993
• Print ISBN:
  9780814755259
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814796375
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Goes beyond the myths and legends to reveal new insights into the real life of Sojourner Truth

Many Americans have long since forgotten that there ever was slavery along the Hudson River. Yet Sojourner Truth was born a slave near the Hudson River in Ulster County, New York, in the late 1700s. Called merely Isabella as a slave, once freed she adopted the name of Sojourner Truth and became a national figure in the struggle for the emancipation of both Blacks and women in Civil War America.

Despite the dual discrimination she suffered as a Black woman, Truth significantly shaped both her own life and the struggle for human rights in America. Through her fierce intelligence, her resourcefulness, and her eloquence, she became widely acknowledged as a remarkable figure during her life, and she has become one of the most heavily mythologized figures in American history.

While some of the myths about Truth offer inspiration, they have also contributed to distortions about American history, especially about the experiences of Black Americans and women. In this landmark work, the product of years of primary research, Pulizter-Prize winning biographer Carleton Mabee has unearthed the best available sources about this remarkable woman to reconstruct the most authentic account of her life to date. Mabee offers new insights on why she never learned to read, on the authenticity of the famous quotations attributed to her (such as Ar'n't I a woman?), her relationship to President Lincoln, her role in the abolitionist movement, her crusade to move freed slaves from the South to the North, and her life as a singer, orator, feminist and woman of faith. This is an engaging, historically precise biography that reassesses the place of Sojourner Truth—slave, prophet, legend—in American history.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Chronology of Truth’s Life
• 1. Growing Up a Slave
• 2. Slave Mother
• 3. Monstrous Kingdom
• 4. New Missions
• 5. Why Did She Never Learn to Read?
• 6. Her Famous Akron Speech
• 7. Confronting Douglass
• 8. Northampton to Battle Creek
• 9. Underground Railroader?
• 10. Romanticized: Libyan Sibyl
• 11. With President Lincoln and the Freedmen
• 12. Riding Washington’s Horse Cars
• 13. Moving Freed Slaves to the North
• 14. Western Land
• 15. Women’s Rights
• 16. Goose Wings and High Heels
• 17. Drink and Smoke
• 18. Friend Titus
• 19. Friends and Supporters
• 20. Singer
• 21. Talking with God
• Notes
• Bibliography of Works Cited
• Acknowledgments
• Index