Sojourner Truth

Paper Summary:

This essay examines why Sojourner Truth, one of the great American heroes, was excluded in the memorial to women?s suffrage, by looking to a much less well known woman who was essentially her contemporary, Harriet Ann Jacobs.

From the Paper:

"Jacobs, who (like Frederick Douglass) spun the chaff of her experiences as a woman defined by and oppressed because of her race into an eloquent and uncompromising narrative of the enduring strength of the human spirit and the lure of freedom to those denied it.
Born into slavery, Jacobs still was also taught to read at an early age. After being orphaned, she becoming increasingly close to her maternal grandmother, Molly Horniblow, who had been freed from slavery; their relationship is described in loving detail in her autobiographical Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The work begins with one of the most compelling opening lines imaginable: "I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away."

More papers on Sojourner Truth:

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