Details
Title I sell the shadow to support the substance. Sojourner Truth. [graphic].
Publisher Michigan: Sojourner Truth
Date 1864
Physical Description 1 photograph: albumen on card mount; mount 10 x 6 cm (4 x 2.5 in.) (carte-de-visite format)
Description Three-quarter length portrait of the African American itinerant preacher, abolitionist, and women's rights advocate born into slavery and originally known as Isabella Baumfree. Shows Truth, seated, and attired in a dark-colored, long sleeved dress with white collar, white shawl with fringe, and a white cap. She wears wire-rimmed glasses and faces front and is turned slightly to her left. She holds knitting in her left hand which rests on a small table that has a decorative table cloth. A notebook and vase of flowers adorn the table. A string of yarn runs across her lap. Truth escaped to freedom in 1826. During the period of the Civil War, Truth captioned, marketed, copyrighted, and sold at least eleven different carte-de-visite portraits of herself at her lectures and through the mail to earn personal funds and advocate for the abolition of slavery. Her knitting probably alludes to her promotion of the handcraft as an industry for advancement for former enslaved persons.
Notes Title from item.
Publication information from copyright statement on verso: Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1864, by Sojourner Truth, in the Clerk's Office, of the U. S. District Court, for the Eastern District of Mich.
Lib. Company. Annual report, 2016, p. 66-67.
Description revised 2022.
Access points revised 2022.
Subject Truth, Sojourner, -1883 -- Portraits
African American women abolitionists.
African American women civil rights workers.
African American women evangelists.
Free African Americans.
Knitting.
Women's rights.
Free women -- 1815-1861.
Genre Albumen prints -- 1860-1870.
Cartes de visite -- 1860-1870.
Portrait photographs -- 1860-1870.
Location Library Company of Philadelphia| Print Department| cdv portraits - sitter - Truth [P.2017.27]
Accession number P.2017.27