Seth Kaller, Inc.

The caption, “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance,” acknowledges that her image had value in the antislavery and women’s rights movements, and by copyrighting it, she could sell copies of her “shadow” to support herself and her causes. At an American Woman Suffrage Association convention in Boston, she commented that she “used to be sold for other people’s benefit, but now she sold herself for her own.”[1]

SOJOURNER TRUTH. Carte-de-visite with albumen photograph, “1864,” but ca. 1866-1867. 1 p., 2 x 3½ in.

Inventory #28065       Price: $6,800

Isabella Baumfree was born into slavery in 1797. After learning in 1826 that her master would not free her despite a law setting July 4, 1827, as the date of emancipation in New York, she ran away. In 1843, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth, becoming an itinerant preacher who quickly became one of the most prominent antislavery and women’s rights orators. She dictated and published her memoirs in 1850 with the assistance of William Lloyd Garrison, and helped recruit African American troops during the Civil War. In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln invited her to the White House. She continued to fight for the rights of African Americans and women until her death in 1883.

This bears her distinctive personal 1864 copyright notice on verso.

Excerptfrom Truth’s speech delivered at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851:
“I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman's rights. 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? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, – for we can't take more than our pint’ll hold. 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. The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept and Lazarus came forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your part? But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.”