SOURCE: “Speaking of Shadows,” in Glorying in Tribulation: The Lifework of Sojourner Truth, Michigan State University Press, 1994, pp. 1-27.

In the following excerpt, Stetson and David examine the power of Truth's oratory, claiming that although much scholarship has focused on her illiteracy, it was in fact irrelevant to Truth's lived experience and political thought.

I sell the shadow to support the substance.

Sojourner Truth¹

On the first day of October 1865 Sojourner Truth dictated a letter from Washington, D.C. to her friend Amy Post in Rochester, New York:

I have heard nothing from my children for a long time, neither from my grandchildren since they left me. I take this occasion to inquire after their whereabouts and health, as well as your own prosperity, and to inform you of my own. I spent over six months at Arlington Heigths [sic], called the Freedmen's village, and served there as...