I’m dictating this to my dear friend and neighbor in Battle Creek, Michigan, Frances Titus, because I cannot read or write words. I feel it is necessary for me to make a formal record of what has happened since the last printing of my narrative. I’ve always held that the events that are found within my narrative are true. Sadly though, much of what has been put on paper about me by others since then is not. These tales about me have become great clinging annoyances that I cannot disentangle myself from because of their widespread acceptance. I’ll now try and correct these falsehoods to the best of my abilities. I am Sojourner Truth and, because that is who I am, you can expect only the truth from me.

            Two women have done me a great disservice in misrepresenting my history. Being even more harmful to me, they fashioned these tall tales for purely selfish reasons. I once attempted to correct one of the inaccurate accounts and was only met with silence. I’ve said that I cannot read nor write. It has always been difficult for me to maintain a written dialogue with others, because those who would write my words for me would change them to fit their voice in the process, as well.[1] It is through Frances Titus, my trusted friend, that I shall right the wrongs against me.

            It was many years ago that I published the first edition of my narrative. I was very grateful to Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, famous abolitionist, for agreeing to write an introductory message to the text. It was only a year after I began selling my book that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s story about Southern slavery was published in one of the antislavery newspapers. Her tale was such a great success that it got published as a novel the next year. Both she and her novel were widely discussed and celebrated here in the North. At the same time that Mrs. Stowe’s fame was rising ever higher, I had need of another printing run of my narrative. For my second printing, I decided it might help my sales if I had another well-known person endorse my life’s history in another introductory passage. These endorsements- some called them “puffs”- were becoming quite sought-after by authors and publishers. Nevertheless, I personally traveled to the Massachusetts home of the world’s best-selling author, Mrs. Stowe, and asked her if she would write me a puff. Bless her, she said “yes”.[2]

            Mrs. Stowe wrote me a very nice preface for my second edition, something which I am still thankful to her for, even though we parted ways after that encounter.[3] But then a decade later, she published an article about me in a newspaper. And the Sojourner Truth she wrote about in “The Libyan Sibyl” isn’t anyone I’m familiar with. As I’m sure anyone who has ever heard me speak can attest, I don’t speak in the dialect that Mrs. Stowe has coming out of my mouth. [Frances: I will verify that Sojourner Truth does not speak with such a dialect. In fact, she has quite the Dutch accent.[4]] I don’t use the word “honey” to address anyone but my daughters. I am from New York; I don’t speak like the colored men and women that are from the South. And again: I am from New York. Mrs. Stowe has it down that I was born in Africa! Now it is true that I may not know when I was born, but I certainly know where I was born. But there is more. According to Mrs. Stowe, I am deceased! As my friend Mrs. Titus can verify, I am very much alive, even some twenty years after the publication of that article.

I tried very hard to understand why Mrs. Stowe would write such blatantly false things about me. True, I had not been on the lecture circuit much at the time, but I hadn’t given anyone reason to think I had passed on. Even if I were lying in my grave, she had no right at all to start writing these lies about me. When I heard from my friends that she had written that article, I didn’t know what to do. I puzzled over it for a little while before I decided to send a letter to the editor of that newspaper. I even sent six copies of my narrative along with my letter so that he, and any others of his staff that wished, could read the truth about me.[5] I didn’t trouble myself to send anything to Mrs. Stowe. I thought to myself: if she could not take the time to read a book that she wrote an introduction for, well then, I would not waste any more of my words on her.

            I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t have tried harder to fix the image that Mrs. Stowe created of me. It’s now so widespread and accepted by people that I can’t even begin to try and correct every person who thinks I’m an African-born plantation slave. And I still get the funniest looks from some people when they hear me speak and don’t hear the sound of a colored Southern woman’s speech coming out of my mouth. But what more could I have done? I reckoned that the best thing I could do was to keep on speaking to the public when I could and show them through my words who I was. And not to pay any mind to this Libyan Sibyl foolishness.[6]

            Yet it was not long after this whole Sibyl nonsense happened that another woman took my words and twisted them for her own uses. Frances Dana Gage was a highly regarded feminist and women’s rights woman; and she did a lot of writing, too, for newspapers. Well, if it wasn’t right after Mrs. Stowe’s story appeared that Mrs. Gage wrote a story about me and a speech I had given some 12 years before at a convention she had chaired. Surprisingly, she got the speech wrong. Those were not my words that he was recalling. Those words were never spoken by me or anyone else at that convention in Ohio.

When I first heard the beginning passage, “…a tall, gaunt black woman in a gray dress and white turban, surmounted by an uncouth sun-bonnet, march deliberately into the church, walk with the air of a queen up the aisle, and take her seat on the pulpit steps”[7], I immediately thought that Mrs. Gage and Mrs. Stowe were in cahoots, for it had sounded like something that might have come out of Mrs. Stowe’s novels. It must be a joke, and it even had me laughing for quite a spell! By the time I had finished listening to all that she wrote, I wasn’t laughing anymore.

            This woman, who I had kept up an occasional correspondence with, wrote something that was only vaguely similar to what I said in Akron; she changed it beyond my recognition with her tainted dramatic phrases and false information about me. Following Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s example, Mrs. Gage had me talking in a Southern Negro dialect.[8] I don’t know why these white women think all coloreds talk like that, especially after hearing my voice. Just like white folk speak in different ways, so do we colored people. Mrs. Gage quotes me as saying I had borne thirteen children: pure fiction. Never would I lie about my children. I have borne five children,[9] and I still have my three daughters with me today.[10] What’s very puzzling is that the woman who chaired this convention wasn’t very aware of her audience. She states that there was a crowd hostile to blacks in attendance that day. This is simply not true. She should know, above all others, that she invited a great variety of reformers, including abolitionists.[11] If there were any number of slavery supporters at the convention, I would certainly have known about it because of my race. There are many other inaccuracies in Mrs. Gage’s account, but I will end with this: why did she write this account of my speech twelve years after I had given it when there were others who had written on it, much more accurately I might add, twelve years previous?[12]

 There are a handful of people, who know the whole sordid tale about Mrs. Gage putting words into my mouth, that tell me it’s for the best. They believe she had good intentions. They say to me: “Oh yes, Sojourner, what she did was wrong- misusing your person, exaggerating your words, falsifying your history- but the truth is that her version of events is better suited to getting you and our causes noticed. Quite honestly, we need you to have said that.” They needed me to have said it.[13] Should I feel guilty that I didn’t make this speech in Akron? Should I now go around saying “ar’n’t I a woman?” to everybody I meet so that I can do my part to further our causes? Have the past thirty years of my life not been enough?

            No, I have a different theory as to why these women are writing their stories. I have met Harriet Beecher Stowe and - I can’t read books but I can read people<[14] - if there was one thing I noticed about Mrs. Stowe when I first met her, it was that she wasn’t a radical. She didn’t stand up for the abolition or feminist causes; she was just writing about them and making money of off them. I think that, with the War Between the States and the issue of slavery being so hotly debated back in ’63, Mrs. Stowe saw a profitable opportunity for herself.[15] I can’t fault Mrs. Stowe for wanting to make money on her publications- I myself am sustained by the purchases of my narrative. However, I don’t exploit other people in order to support myself. To do so is one of the most indecent things one person can do to another. Mrs. Stowe has wronged me in this manner.

            I believe that Mrs. Gage had reasons similar to Mrs. Stowe in publishing her story about me. I’ve been acquainted with Mrs. Gage for many years, and she is, without a doubt, a true radical. She’s one of the most outspoken feminists I know, and she’s sympathetic to the Negro cause, too. There is one other thing she champions for: her own fame. The only reason she wrote that story was that she wanted to ride the wave of celebrity Mrs. Stowe had began with her Libyan Sybil article.[16] Mrs. Gage was feeling inadequate and sought to change that by writing an even more pretentious article to rival that of Mrs. Stowe. So once again my person was exploited to further the selfish motives of another.

            With all that now having been said, it is my duty as a follower of Christ to be forgiving. I forgive these two white women for their sins against me. It is probably too late to fix the image of me that is in this generation’s head, but it’s my hope that future generations can forgive (as I have) and, more important, forget Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. Gage’s maltreatment of me. I am Sojourner Truth and all that I have just said is the truth.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Gilbert, Olive. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Ed. Margaret Washington. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

 

Painter, Nell Irvin. “Representing Truth: Sojourner Truth’s Knowing and Becoming Known.” The Journal of American History 81 (1994): 461-492.

 

Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol. New York: W.W. Norton &

Co., 1996.

 

 

Stetson, Erlene and Linda David. Glorying in Tribulation: The Lifework of Sojourner Truth. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1994.

 

 

Wortham, Anne. “Sojourner Truth: Itinerant Truth-teller.” World and I 15.3 (2000):

291. Infotrac: Expanded Academic ASAP. Suffolk County Community College. 18 Nov. 2003. <http://web5.infotrac.galegroup.com>.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Refutation of Truth

 

Lori Calabria

HS33

12/9/03