Sojourner Truth

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ST , a charismatic religious and political leader (Christian revivalist, abolitionist, and feminist) in the northern states of the USA in the mid-nineteenth century, dictated her life story, a spiritual autobiography or slave narrative, to a literate transcriber in 1850. Her texts are problematic because of the other voices (voices of literate white well-wishers) which interpose themselves between author and reader. Her art was oral; she was a speaker and preacher rather than a writer (though her works include poetry as well as speeches). As a celebrity in her lifetime, she was much observed and written about, but her transcribers mostly seem to have succumbed to the temptation of fairly radical editing.
Black and white photo of Sojourner Truth, wearing wire spectacles, a white cap, long, dark, long-sleeved dress, and a white shawl. She sits beside a small table with a vase of flowers on it, holding a half-done piece of knitting. She regularly used small, carte-de-visite photos to publicize her cause, under the slogan: “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance.”

Milestones

In or after 1797

ST was born a slave, as near as she can . . . calculate between 1797 and 1800,
Truth, Sojourner et al. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Oxford University Press.
13
in Hurley, New York, the youngest but one in a family of ten or twelve children.
Most sources simply record 1797 as the year of her birth. When she allegedly said, we was all brought over from Africa, father, an' mother an' I, an' a lot more of us, she was presumably speaking historically.
Truth, Sojourner et al. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Oxford University Press.
154
Stewart, Jeffrey C. et al. “Introduction”. Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Oxford University Press, p. xxxiii - xlvii.
xxxvii
Truth, Sojourner et al. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Oxford University Press.
15
Montgomery, Janey Weinhold. A Comparative Analysis of the Rhetoric of Two Negro Women Orators: Sojourner Truth and Frances E. Watkins Harper. Fort Hays Kansas State College.
29

1850

ST told her autobiography to Olive Gilbert , who wrote it down and had it printed in Boston that year as Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a northern slave, emancipated from bodily servitude by the state of New York, in 1828.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Andrews, William L. et al., editors. The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Oxford University Press.
738

29 May 1851

ST gave her most famous speech, now known by the catch-phrase Ar'n't I a Woman?, at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, USA.
Gates, Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay, editors. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Norton.
198
Mullane, Deirdre, editor. Crossing the Danger Water: Three hundred years of African-American writing. Anchor.
186

21 June 1851

ST 's speech at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, was printed in a single long paragraph in the Anti-Slavery Bugle at Salem, Ohio.
Stewart, Jeffrey C. et al. “Introduction”. Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Oxford University Press, p. xxxiii - xlvii.
xlvi n1, xxxiv

23 April 1863

Frances Dana Gage , organizer of the women's rights conference at Akron, Ohio, where ST had delivered her most famous speech, printed her own transcription in the Independent, published in New York.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
239

26 November 1883

ST died at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan, USA. She was very old and had been suffering from leg ulcers.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
239
Mullane, Deirdre, editor. Crossing the Danger Water: Three hundred years of African-American writing. Anchor.
185

Biography

Claiming an Identity

In or after 1797

ST was born a slave, as near as she can . . . calculate between 1797 and 1800,
Truth, Sojourner et al. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Oxford University Press.
13
in Hurley, New York, the youngest but one in a family of ten or twelve children.
Most sources simply record 1797 as the year of her birth. When she allegedly said, we was all brought over from Africa, father, an' mother an' I, an' a lot more of us, she was presumably speaking historically.
Truth, Sojourner et al. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Oxford University Press.
154
Stewart, Jeffrey C. et al. “Introduction”. Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Oxford University Press, p. xxxiii - xlvii.
xxxvii
Truth, Sojourner et al. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Oxford University Press.
15
Montgomery, Janey Weinhold. A Comparative Analysis of the Rhetoric of Two Negro Women Orators: Sojourner Truth and Frances E. Watkins Harper. Fort Hays Kansas State College.
29

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