Knitting & Fine Art: Sojourner Truth, Anonymous

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) began life as Isabella, one of thirteen enslaved children who grew up speaking Dutch in Ulster County, New York. At age eleven, she was sold and separated from her family. She learned to speak English, declared herself free in 1826, and was called by the Holy Spirit in 1843. At that time, she gave herself the name Sojourner Truth and began preaching. Later, she lectured on topics of importance to her—women’s suffrage and the need for better living and working conditions for African-Americans.

Above: Anonymous, 19^th century, Sojourner Truth (c. 1797-1883), Abolitionist. Photograph, albumen silver print. 1864.

In early 1864, she had her photograph printed in multiples for sale at her lectures and by mail order. Called a carte-de-visite (visiting card), this photograph measured 3.25 x 2.25″ inches, and Truth sold them for 33¢ each. She hoped to make enough money through the sale of her photographs and her autobiography (dictated first in the late 1840s and revised over the years) to support herself: “I sell the shadow [a nineteenth-century term for photograph] to support the substance [her body].”

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Truth used her story and her photograph to portray herself on her own terms—a free woman—not as the enslaved person that her largely white audiences might have pictured her. The photograph reproduced here shows Truth wearing a respectable, fashionable dress, such as any middle-class woman might wear. The flowers and book on the table were standard props used by photographers. Although Truth was illiterate and would not have been able to read the book, she could certainly knit, despite the maiming of her right hand in an 1826 accident. The knitting pictured here may be a sleeve in progress, attached to its ball of yarn by wonderful arabesques and loops arrayed across the expanse of Truth’s skirt. Along with the flowers and book, this knitting—Truth’s personal contribution to the image—completes the effect of gentility.

—Fronia E. Wissman 

Originally published in Interweave Knits Spring 2005. 

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