Seth Kaller, Inc.

This albumen photograph features Sojourner Truth seated at a table holding knitting needles. The verso contains copyright notice at the federal court in Detroit, Michigan, indicating that it was likely taken in that city.

The caption, “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance,” acknowledges that her image had value. At a human-rights convention, she commented that she “used to be sold for other people’s benefit, but now she sold herself for her own.”

SOJOURNER TRUTH. Carte-de-visite, 1864, [copyright, Detroit, Michigan]. 1 p., 2 x 3¼ in.

Inventory #27078.99       Price: $10,500

Isabella Baumfree / Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) was born into slavery and spent her early life on the New York estate of Colonel Charles Hardenbergh (d. 1806), a Dutch American, ninety-five miles north of New York City. She spoke only Dutch until she was nine years old and never learned to read and write. Around 1815, she fell in love with fellow slave Robert but was instead forced to marry Thomas, with whom she had five children. In 1826, when her master failed to free her as promised or indicated he would not follow the provisions of an 1817 New York law that set July 4, 1827, as the date of final emancipation in the state, Baumfree ran away. When she learned that her five-year-old son had been sold to Alabama, she sued his new owner under the name Isabella Van Wagenen and won, becoming one of the first black women to sue a white man and win. After experiencing a religious conversion, she moved to New York City and became a housekeeper. In 1843, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth and became an itinerant preacher. She soon became involved in both the antislavery and women’s rights movements. With the assistance of William Lloyd Garrison, she dictated and published her memoirs in 1850. She moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1857, and helped recruit African American troops for the Union Army during the Civil War. In 1864, the National Freedmen’s Relief Association employed her in Washington, D.C., and President Abraham Lincoln invited her to the White House in October of that year. After the war, she continued to advocate for African American and women’s rights.

Excerpt from Truth’s speech delivered at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851:

“I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman have a pint, and a man a quart – why can't she have her little pint full?... The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don't know what to do. Why children, if you have woman's rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won't be so much trouble. I can't read, but I can hear. I have heard the Bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again....”

Condition: tack hole in upper margin just touching photograph; ½-inch tear in caption area; other minor wear to mount.