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- Title
- I sell the shadow to support the substance. Sojourner Truth
- 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., 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.
- Date
- 1864
- Location
- Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department cdv portraits - sitter - Truth [P.2017.27]
- Title
- [Mary Ann C. Shadd?, Washington, D.C.]
- Description
- Bust-length portrait of an African American woman, possibly American-Canadian anti-slavery activist, journalist, publisher, teacher, and lawyer Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Sitter faces right and wears her long hair back and in a chignon and top knot. A head band with an ornament adorns her hair. She is attired in a dark-colored, V-neck garment with a white ruffled collar and dark-colored lace neckerchief. She also wears a cross necklace and drop earrings. Shad Cary, was born free in Delaware to parents active in the Underground Railroad, before relocating to Pennsylvania, then Canada in 1853. In later years, following the Civil War, Shad Cary resided in Washington, D.C. where she died in 1893. During her life, she founded a school for Black children in Pennsylvania and a racially integrated school in Ontario, Canada; was the first Black woman publisher in North America when she founded, in 1853, and edited the anti-slavery and civil rights advocacy newspaper "The Provincial Freeman,"; was the second Black woman to attend law school (Howard University) in the United States; and founded, in 1880, the women's rights advocacy organization the Colored Women's Progressive Franchise. Shad Cary also wrote for multiple newspapers, such as the National Era, served as a Civil War recruiter, and was the first African American woman to vote in a national election., Title from manuscript note on verso: Mariann [sic] C. Shadd, Washington, D.C., Photographer's imprint stamped on verso., Date inferred from active dates of photographer at address listed in imprint., Henrici & Garns operated from 709 South Second Street between 1874 and 1876.
- Creator
- Henrici & Garns, photographer
- Date
- [ca. 1875]
- Location
- Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department cdv portraits - sitter - Cary [P.2023.4]