SOJOURNER TRUTH (1797-1883)
One of the most famous nineteenth-century black American
women, Isabella Van Wagenen better known as Sojourner Truth, was
an uneducated former slave known for her active opposition to
slavery. This is one way in which she resembled that of Harriet
Tubman. A tall, big, raw-boned black woman, Truth is admired for
her ability to voice fearlessly and pungently the necessarty
Truths that follow, self-censoring abolitionists and feminists
probably dared not conceive and certainly could not utter. Over
the years she has stood for the nexus connecting race and sex in
liberal reform. As a symbol of the unintimidated, articulate
black woman. Truth both reminds black Americans that black women
have gender as well as racial self-interests and refuses to let
white feminists forget that black women are women too. even
though she never learned to read or write and could not generate
the books, letters, or other historical documents that usually
guarantee historical longevity, she is one of a very small number
of Americans whose reputations have endured more than a century
after their deaths.
Go Back To The Main Page