Sojourner Truth—born in slavery—could only estimate the year of her birth, between 1797 and 1800. Multilingual but illiterate, she escaped her captors, becoming a sensational convention speaker. As a mother, laborer, abolition activist, and suffragist, she personified the combination of the energies of the antislavery and women’s rights movements. Despite the many hardships she endured, she lived to perhaps 86, dying in 1883. This photograph was taken c. 1870.
Source photograph: Randall Studio. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Date: c. 1870
Sojourner Truth—born in slavery—could only estimate the year of her birth, between 1797 and 1800. Multilingual but illiterate, she escaped her captors, becoming a sensational convention speaker. As a mother, laborer, abolition activist, and suffragist, she personified the combination of the energies of the antislavery and women’s rights movements. Despite the many hardships she endured, she lived to perhaps 86, dying in 1883. This photograph was taken c. 1870.
Source photograph: Randall Studio. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Date: c. 1870