SOURCE: “Storyteller and Songstress,” in Sojourner Truth as Orator: Wit, Story, and Song, Greenwood Press, 1997, pp. 51-87.

[In the following excerpt, Fitch and Mandziuk examine Truth's narrative discourses in the context of major rhetorical concepts.]

Any understanding of the rhetorical power of Sojourner Truth must begin with an appreciation of her tremendous appeal and the hold that she commanded over audiences. For example, the report in the National Anti-Slavery Standard of her 1863 speech to the State Sabbath School Convention in Battle Creek, Michigan, provided an impressive indication of her power and popularity:

Rev. T. W. Jones arose, and addressing the moderator, said that the speaker was “Sojourner Truth”. This was enough: five hundred persons were instantly on their feet, prepared to give the most earnest and respectful attention to her who was once but a slave. Had Henry Ward Beecher, or any other such renowned man's name been mentioned, it is doubtful whether it would have produced the electrical effect on the audience that her name did.¹

Most accounts of Truth's speaking indicated similar reactions. Her rhetoric commanded the attention of audiences and the respect of her contemporaries, primarily because it was so accessible and simple, yet clever and insightful. Truth's personal style was marked by an interweaving of small anecdotes, tales from her personal experiences, familiar biblical references, and homespun, common sense arguments. These basic aspects of her rhetoric combined to form a substantial, persuasive framework. From such varied sources she intertwined the tale of her life with the tale of her people. Coupled with her powerful physical presence and simple, Quaker-like dress, the result was a rhetorical narrative that both entertained and persuaded. Reactions to Truth, such as those described by Frances D. Gage in her recollection of Truth's speech at the 1851 Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, [“And ar'n't I a woman?”] were common: “I have never in my life seen anything like the magical influence that subdued the mobbish spirit of the day, and turned the jibes and sneers of an excited crowd into notes of respect and admiration.”² Truth's rhetoric held audiences in rapt attention, transforming their sentiments through the simple logic of her stories.

In this chapter, the narrative qualities of Sojourner Truth's rhetoric are explored in depth in order to reveal the persuasiveness and power that resided in her character and her particular selection of stories. First, an overview of the theoretical concepts guiding the narrative paradigm is provided, and the major concepts to be applied to Truth's rhetoric are developed. Second, the specific narrative elements of Truth's rhetoric are described and analyzed, with close attention given to the strategies of self-definition she employs in the development of her own character. The intertwining of Truth's autobiographical story with other existing narratives, such as biblical examples, also is explored. Third, Truth's rhetorical influence is assessed according to the criteria of narrative probability and narrative fidelity.

THE NARRATIVE PARADIGM AND NARRATIVE CRITICISM

The study of narratives and storytelling has a rich tradition, having been a centerpiece of rhetorical and literary studies as well as an important form of inquiry in other fields. From the Ancients to contemporary theorists, treatises on persuasion and other expressive forms have considered narrative variously as a subsection, such as the narratio of classical rhetorical schemes, or as the central formal element, such as the analytical descriptions of plot development and event sequences common in literary studies.³ Recently, interest in narrative has expanded, moving away from an understanding of narrative merely as an element added to argument toward a more fundamental sense of narrative as a “paradigm” of human understanding. Following Walter Fisher's initial statement of this expanded view,⁴ the study of narrative in rhetorical studies has developed into a perspective for viewing the logic of stories as basic to human rationality. As Fisher explained:

The narrative paradigm implies that human communication should be viewed as historical as well as situational, as stories or accounts competing with other stories or accounts. … The narrative paradigm challenges the notions that human communication—if it is to be considered rhetorical—must be argumentative in form, that reason is to be attributed only to discourse marked by clearly identifiable modes of inference and implication, and that the norms for evaluation of rhetorical communication must be rational standards taken exclusively from informal or formal logic.⁵

Because it assumes that humans fundamentally judge rhetoric based on criteria linked to their intrinsic understanding of the story form and function, the narrative paradigm provides a means of accounting for the persuasive power of rhetoric that does not conform to the classical or scientific standards of deductive argument and proof. Rather, as Fisher proposed, narrative rationality consists of an audience's ability to evaluate the “good reasons” on which a story is based and the coherence of the story overall. Fisher labeled these two dimensions as “narrative fidelity” and “narrative probability,” respectively. Each needs to be explained in further detail.

Defined at its most basic level, “narrative fidelity” refers to the question of whether a story “rings true” for an audience. As Fisher proposed, “The principle of fidelity pertains to the individuated components of stories—whether they represent accurate assertions about social reality and thereby constitute good reasons for belief or action.”⁶ Specifically, “good reasons” are the bases offered by rhetors in support of the adoption of their messages, and each “is inextricably bound to a value—to a conception of the good.”⁷ Accordingly, audiences accept or reject stories based on the presence or lack of good reasons undergirding each account. Assessment of the fidelity of a narrative also entails judgments about the accuracy of any facts and their contextualization in the story, as well as the appropriateness and relevance of the facts and values the narrative embodies.⁸

While narrative fidelity refers to the principles of reliability and truthfulness, “narrative probability” is related to an audience's assessment of the integrity of the story overall. According to Fisher, narrative probability is the dimension of rationality that seeks coherence in storied accounts across three dimensions: argumentative or structural coherence; material coherence, defined as the comparison of a story with stories told in other discourses; and characterological coherence, defined as the reliability of characters to act according to “an organized set of actional tendencies.”⁹ Fisher noted that the third dimension of “character” is unique to narrative rationality, because whether a character contradicts its “actional tendencies” or is predictably consistent can influence the acceptance of a story by an audience. As such, “character” is related to the fidelity and believability of a story in fundamental ways: “Determining a character's motives is prerequisite to trust, and trust is the foundation of belief.”¹⁰ Consequently, if characters are not consistent and credible, the narrative will fail to persuade audiences.

As the use of the narrative paradigm as a critical system for the evaluation of rhetorical discourse has developed, several dimensions of Fisher's original model profitably have been expanded. Among the most relevant to the study of speakers, such as Sojourner Truth, who combined autobiographical narratives with other themes in their discourse, have been the continued exploration of the dimension of character and the analysis of the rhetorical function of proverbs and familiar, existing narratives. Each of these theoretical and conceptual developments will be explained in brief.

Typically, a narrative will contain many characters, each representing a set of behaviors and traits developed through the course of the story. A more specialized story form is the autobiographical narrative, in which the rhetor strategically creates an impression of his or her own character for the audience. Building upon Fisher's claim that characters are the value orientations represented by persons, which may or may not be the same as the persons themselves,¹¹ A. Cheree Carlson explored the persuasive function of autobiographical characters. She argued that such self-defined characters provide a potent rhetorical means of power for individuals, particularly in cases where rhetors are constrained by a stereotypical set of categories from which they desire to distance themselves. Carlson concluded that “the creation of an autobiographical narrative is a valuable tool in the reclaiming of the creator's own life and character. The narrator has the potential to overcome the binary thinking inherent in traditional logic to form a realm where difference is empowering.”¹² In the case of a nineteenth-century African American woman such as Sojourner Truth, the strategic creation of a successful character offered a potential means to transcend negative social definitions of her race and gender.

In another essay on character, Carlson expands upon strategic function of characters in the narrative in addition to that of the autobiographical narrator. She argued that another significant dimension of character creation is related to values and ideological meanings. That is, characters may function in a story as representations of particular, circumscribed viewpoints. She explained this dimension: “Authors may create characters that embody topoi which can serve ideological purposes. Like the animals in Aesop's fables, these characters are constrained by the nature of the ‘truths’ they represent for the audience.”¹³ In essence, secondary characters serve as vehicles for rhetors to express moral or ideological messages and hence often are condensations of traits that function in opposition to the more well-rounded portraits that typify autobiographical characters.

A second significant expansion of narrative theory has been the examination of the function that the invocation of existing stories, such as biblical tales and other short narratives, serves for the rhetor. In two studies of the rhetorical nature of parables, William G. Kirkwood argued that an understanding of the interactive and persuasive function of these short, invented stories could lead to a more general understanding of the rhetorical strategies inherent in narrative discourse. Kirkwood proposed that the primary rhetorical effect of a parable is to challenge an audience to confront both its states of awareness and its beliefs and values.¹⁴ These rhetorical functions are achieved because of the specificity of parables and their intrinsic focus on details, not explanations:

By ostensibly describing what and how, not why, narration is at one level an atheoretical or pretheoretical mode of expression, one therefore not readily susceptible to ordinary methods of analysis and refutation. Thus storytelling can briefly override auditors' immediate defenses and introduce views of life which would otherwise have been rejected before they could prompt self-examination in listeners.¹⁵

Narratives suspend the critical impulse of an audience primarily because it is difficult to dispute the very particular events contained in parables or other stories. Consequently, a rhetor can use narratives to break through audiences' reliance on argument and inference and instead initiate a process of “intrapersonal confrontation.”¹⁶

In addition to their ability to evoke self-confrontation in listeners, parables and other short narratives function to redefine the relationship between rhetor and audience. Kirkwood argued that the very act of storytelling transforms the nature of the interaction between speaker and listener, particularly in cases where the authority or legitimacy of the rhetor is challenged.¹⁷ As an illustration of this function, Kirkwood pointed to the biblical account of Jesus' invocation of the “Good Samaritan” story in response to a series of challenging questions from a lawyer: by shifting the grounds of the conversation from dialogue to narrative, the speaker successfully reversed both the method of inquiry and the pattern of authority in the relationship. Storytelling thus both confronts the listener's level of self-awareness as well as redefines the status and roles of rhetor and audience:

Telling a story enjoined a form of discourse which is highly personal and makes no pretense of detached, impersonal discussion. It is openly rather than covertly emotional, simple rather than complex in its apparent meaning, and oriented toward action, not intellectualizing. The value of this shift in responding to the challenge posed … [is that it confronts the audience] as a person, not just an adversary.¹⁸

Ultimately, because of its ability to redefine the communicative context, storytelling allows rhetors to transcend their audience's preconceptions about them. Consequently, the use of narrative also has an epideictic value, in that the invocation of stories functions to disclose aspects of the rhetors' inner life and character.¹⁹

From the general boundaries of the narrative paradigm to the specific explorations into character, story, and function, several useful categories emerge for the critical evaluation of rhetorical narratives used by Sojourner Truth. Her discourse can be assessed in terms of its fidelity and probability, its strategic creation of both an autobiographical and secondary set of characters, its invocation of familiar stories in the service of the larger narrative of Truth's life and work, and its functional dimensions, particularly its openness and flexibility. In the next two sections of this chapter, Truth's speeches, as well as the reports of her speeches, the public letters attributed to her, and the songs she is known to have authored, are analyzed according to these conceptual frames. The goal of the analysis is to both describe and interpret the narrative dimensions of Truth's rhetoric.

THREE FUNDAMENTAL TALES: SLAVE, CITIZEN, WOMAN

Sojourner Truth's rhetoric exists for the contemporary reader only in fragments. Much of what is available comes from parts of her speeches as reported in newspapers and the reminiscences of observers of the time and from texts included as part of her own Narrative as compiled by others. Because Truth remained illiterate, all of what we know of her discourse comes from these representations of her character and her words. Consequently, to achieve an understanding of her rhetoric it is important to consider the breadth of these fragments, rather than focus upon a particular speech or set of speeches as representative. At this more abstract level, the examination of Truth's use of narratives provides a significant set of insights that reveal how she defined her own “character” for her audiences, as well as the means she used to confront their values and attitudes regarding the variety of issues she addressed.

When the fragments of her discourse are analyzed as a whole, three very specific, yet interwoven, stories emerge as the grounding for her personal influence and persuasive appeals. The primary story Truth told was the tale of her own life, including her experiences as a slave and her transformation from a state of hatred through her religious conversion. This personal story functions as the foundation for the other two narratives, both of which define the traits of characters at play in the social dramas of the times. In regard to the social debate over woman's rights, Truth used narrative means to draw the contrast between the natures of women and the natures of men. Similarly, in regard to both abolition and the question of the freedmen, Truth evoked narrative to define a stark contrast between the traits of whites and the traits of African Americans as the main characters in these debates. Each of these stories was replete with details, values, and appeals to emotion, and each created a strong and persuasive presence for Truth as both character and storyteller.

THE SLAVE NARRATIVE: SELF-DEFINITION AND CONFRONTATION

Truth's primary story was the tale of her own life, particularly her experiences as a slave. When told to audiences, this story often included the details of her transformation from a state of hatred toward her slave masters to one of forgiveness upon her religious conversion. This narrative of her life was the most frequently repeated theme in her speeches, and consequently it provided the fundamental foundation for Truth's rhetorical strategies. First, by telling her own story and filling it with details rich in values, Truth established her own character as moral and authoritative, especially in comparison to her white or racially diverse audiences. Second, by grounding her responses to hecklers and other resistant audiences in this narrative form, Truth used the story of her life to transcend negative definitions and preconceptions about her. The slave narrative reached beyond the traditional means of argumentation and thus challenged audiences on an emotional and personal level.

NARRATIVE OF HER EARLY LIFE AND FAMILY.

The story Truth related of her own experiences as a slave usually featured references to her background and upbringing in the state of New York, her ignorance of her own human worth, and her relationship to her parents, particularly her mother. Each of these dimensions functioned to establish the fundamental character traits of Truth herself. The narrative reported as part of her speech to an antislavery meeting in New York City in 1853 was typical of this story's components. First, Truth related the details that set the plot and scene of the story:

I was brought up in the State of New York among the Low Dutch. I could not speak English till I was 10 years old, and I can't read now, but I can feel! I can see back to the days of my childhood; then I thought I was a brute, for I heard people say that we were a species of monkeys or baboons; and as I had never seen any of those animals, I didn't know but they were right.²⁰

As in this particular telling, Truth often began the tale with a recognition of her own lack of knowledge as a child and her continued illiteracy even later in life. Yet, in these narratives she distinguished carefully between her own character traits and the ignorance about her race that was imposed upon her by what she had “heard people say.” In telling the story in this way, she achieved a significant contrast between the power of the slaveholders and her perfect innocence as a child. Thus, she established the grounds for the story of her journey from innocence, through hatred, through transcendence. Accounts similar to this 1853 story of her early life and childhood as a slave can be found in many other documents, including two other speeches in 1854 and 1856,²¹ as well as Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Libyan Sibyl” article²² and a report of an 1871 speech in heavy dialect in the Narrative.²³

In her speech to the New York Anti-Slavery Society in 1853, as Truth continued the story of her early life she recalled her family:

I remember my parents; my father died, and I think I can see my mother now as she stood many a night in the old apple orchard, under the open heaven, when the moon and stars were brightly shining. My poor mother would weep and say, in Dutch, “Oh! mein Got, mein Got,” which means in English my God. “My poor children will be sold into Slavery.” I did not know what that meant then, but I have learned since. My mother cried bitterly, and I took the corner of her old apron, and wiped her eyes and asked what she cried for. She said “my poor child we are going to be sold, and we shant see one another again; when you are far away; remember that I shall see the same moon and stars that you look at, and, when we die we shall both go to heaven among them.”²⁴

The inclusion of these references to her parents allowed Truth to further underscore the contrast between the brutality of slavery and the basic humanity of the slave. In this speech, however, the story of her parents was embellished somewhat for dramatic effect; in actuality, her father had not died until later into her adulthood. Only in the report of her 1853 speech to the First Congregational Church in New York City was there a more accurate reference to Truth's father, including the statement that he “had been allowed to freeze to death.”²⁵ Instead, the story of the separation from her mother was central in Truth's narrative of her life and provided much of the emotional impact in the speeches where she featured this story of her slave experiences. When she spoke of crying with her mother in the tale, Truth established a fundamental link with the audience that was based on their identification with the tragic emotions in the scene. Moreover, the accounts always featured her mother's wisdom and faith, both in teaching her child to believe in the salvation of heaven and in demonstrating to her that the strength of the family bond transcends the specific location and brutality of slavery. Through these details, Truth successfully depicted herself as the innocent, yet ever moral, victim of the evils of others. Through the character of her mother, Truth also portrayed the basic humanity and goodness of the slave.

The cruelty of slavery was developed further through Truth's references to her experience of motherhood. Often when she spoke of her years as a slave, she recalled in her speeches the separation from her own children that the system forced upon her. For example, in her 1856 speech to the Michigan Friends of Human Progress Annual Convention, she described her loss in striking terms:

As you were speaking this mornin of little children, I was lookin round and thinkin it was most beautiful. But I have had children and yet never owned one, no never owned one; and of such ther's millions—who goes to teach dem? who goes to teach dem? You have teachers for your children but who will teach de poor slave children? I want to know what has become of the love I ought to have for my children? I did have love for them but what has become of it. I have had five children and never could take any one of dem up and say “my child” or “my children,” unless it was when no one could see me.²⁶

These references served to establish Truth as a victim of slavery's inhumane treatment. The heartrending image of a mother who was not able, except in secrecy, to gather her child to her breast helped to magnify the evils of this system, such that it was so cruel that it would deny Truth even the sacred bond between mother and child. Again, this narrative largely served to provide dramatic impact for her, as we know that Truth was not separated from her children throughout her life but had succeeded in rescuing a son who was sold away and had spent her later years living in close proximity to her three daughters. Yet, through these examples she was able to define a fundamental horror of slavery by drawing upon a universal, sympathetic image, the child. As a daughter she was not allowed to know the joys of living with her family, and as a mother and wife, she suffered the same fate, “robbed” on both accounts. In the Michigan Friends speech, she declared, “I'se been robbed of all my affection for my husband and my children”²⁷; in her 1853 speech to the First Congregational Church in New York City, she stated that she had been “robbed of her children, her father, mother, sister and brother; yet she lived, and not only lived, but God lived in her.”²⁸ Truth's references to broken families allowed her a powerful means to illustrate the criminal nature of slavery. Additionally, the statement to the First Congregational Church reveals another aspect of the strategic value of Truth's references to her children. Although she had suffered terribly at the hands of slavery, she argued that she still had succeeded in transcending its attempts to undermine her humanity and dignity. Consequently, Truth established herself as both witness and survivor, thereby underscoring her own credibility as a speaker in a particularly effective way.

Truth's accounts of the horrors of her slave experiences developed even more power in the speeches where she included accounts of the physical brutality she often suffered while in bondage. For example, in her speech to the Michigan Friends in 1856, Truth described the cruelty of one master: “When I was sold I had a severe, hard master, and I was tied up in de barn and whipped. Oh! 'till de blood run down on de floor.”²⁹ In a report of her 1853 speech before the Congregational Church in Williamsburgh, New York, Truth is said to have provided even more vivid details of her treatment as a slave:

The lecturer, who is quite aged, commenced by saying that she was born a slave in this State, and resided on the banks of the North River, near Albany, until the time of her emancipation, which took place when she was about 25 years of age. During that time she had five different masters, some of whom were very severe, and she related with tears in her eyes the manner in which she had been tied up in the barn, with her clothing stripped from her back and whipped until the blood stood in pools upon the floor, and scars upon her back were undeniable proofs of her assertion.³⁰

In both of these examples, the accounts of brutality and scars functioned to provide validity for Truth's character. The reliance on painful personal experiences in her speeches established for Truth the fundamental right to speak on the topic of abolition to audiences more educated or more privileged than herself. Because she herself had felt the blows and the lash, her authority before her audiences came not from traditional learning or basic sympathy for the slave, but from this life experience. Thus, she could remind an audience of the rightness and superiority of her views on the subject.

Truth also conveyed her portrait of the evils of slavery through her singing. Many reports of her speaking included notations that she began or ended an address to an audience with a song and that these performances deeply affected her hearers. Truth composed original sets of lyrics, often setting her versions to the tunes of familiar, popular songs. When she spoke about her life and the evils of slavery, Truth frequently sang “I Am Pleading for My People,” an original composition that she delivered to the melody of “Auld Lang Syne.”³¹ The lyrics of this song provided audiences with a lamentation about the lowly state of the slave:

I am pleading for my people—
A poor, down-trodden race,
Who dwell in freedom's boasted land
With no abiding place.(32)

Over a total of eleven verses, this song recounted the forced labor, the scars of the lash, the despair of mothers who see children on the auction block, and the fiendishness of the slaveowners. Moreover, the lyrics also contained a subtle critique of the American citizenry who, while interested in the affairs of other countries, has forgotten “your own oppressed at home.” Truth recalled the impact of this song upon her audiences: “‘When my voice was good, and strong,’ she said, ‘I could make that roar.’”³³ Another song that Truth liked to present to audiences was “I Pity the Poor Slavemother,” a song originally published in an 1844 antislavery songbook.³⁴ Although the lyrics were not composed by her, Truth's performance of this song furthered the authoritativeness of her presence and her testimony about slavery since she literally embodied the woman about whom she sang. Part of the impression Truth must have made as a singer, particularly coupled with the occasions on which she spoke of her life experience, rested in the connection between her evocation of the “sorrow song” typical of slaves, wherein the sadness of the slave's condition is transcended into a hymn of joy because of a faith in the ultimate justice to come,³⁵ and her own powerful physical presence. Moreover, in her singing Truth presented the clearest connection to her race, in evoking the tradition of emancipation through singing that was common within African American slave communities.³⁶

Overall, Sojourner Truth's evocation of her own slave experiences functioned to establish a strong, authoritative character for herself. Additionally, her reliance on these stories allowed her to reach audiences in ways that diverged from traditional argumentative grounds. In 1854, the Liberator noted, “Sojourner Truth … made one of her characteristic speeches, speaking out of her former experience of slavery, and in a manner to command the regard and undivided attention of the great audience.”³⁷ Similar highly positive evaluations of addresses in which she spoke of her slave life abounded in reports of these speeches. One especially striking commentary was the remarks made by the National Anti-Slavery Standard in regard to her 1863 speech to the State Sabbath School Convention in Battle Creek, Michigan:

This short speech from Sojourner was, perhaps, the most telling anti-slavery speech that was ever delivered at Battle Creek or in Michigan. Scores of eyes were filled with tears, and it seems as if every individual present sanctioned all she said. And how could anyone help it? for surely if there were any present whose hearts failed to beat in sympathy with her remarks, they must be a good distance from the kingdom of heaven, whatever their profession may be.³⁸

As such reports clearly illustrated, by referencing the story of her life as a slave Truth's construction of an autobiographical character provided a solid ground from which she could appeal to her audiences. The details about her innocence, victimization, and sufferings transcended any counter-arguments and created instead a compelling tale that could not be refuted. Not only were her validity and character as a speaker undeniable because of these personal experiences, but the emotional quality of her tale reached her audiences on a level beyond pure reason, evoking tearful and heartfelt responses from her hearers. As Lucy Stone concluded about Truth: “She took a deep and personal interest in the anti-slavery movement. Her speeches came with direct and terrible force, moving friend and foe alike.”³⁹

RELIGION AND TALES OF CONVERSION.

As she developed her life story in her rhetoric, Truth also frequently portrayed the circumstances of her religious conversion. This tale of how she transformed herself from bitterness to forgiveness became a central part of her own character development and the narrative means through which she challenged her audiences' views of slavery and her race. There were many variations in Truth's accounts of her musings about, and encounters with, God in her speeches and the extant reports, but essentially three themes were dominant in these tellings: Truth's recollection of her misconceptions about the nature and form of God, her subsequent lack of faith in his power when he does not answer her simple appeals, and her ultimate conversion and personal relationship with God.

Truth's narrative of her discovery of religion and early misconceptions often began with the story about how her first impressions of God were passed to her from her mother. In many of these accounts, she featured the recollection of her mother's teachings that God had made the moon and the stars and that he was the force that would bind the family together and protect them even after they were sold away from each other. For example, in her 1871 speech at Tremont Temple in Boston, Truth remembered:

[M]y mother took my han'. Dey opened a canoby ob ebben, an' she sat down an' I an' my brudder sat down by her, en she says, “Look up to de moon an' stars dat shine upon you father an' upon you mother when you sole far away, an' upon you brudders an' sisters, dat is sole away,” for dere was a great number ob us, an' was all sole away befor' my membrance. I asked her who had made de moon an' de stars, an' she says, “God,” an' says I, Where is God? “Oh!” says she, “chile, he sits in de sky, an' he hears you w'en you ax him w'en you are away from us to make your marster an' misteress good, an' he will do it.”⁴⁰

Two aspects of Truth's telling of this tale became important factors in the persuasiveness of her narrative. First, accounts like this one underscored the simple innocence of the slave child who knew nothing of God and thus literally pictured him as a being elevated in a chair in the clouds. In many reports of her speeches and statements, Truth also was quoted as saying that she believed that God had a literal form: “She prayed to God, but she did not know what or who the Divine Being was. In her mind he was like Napoleon, or General Washington.”⁴¹ Taken by themselves, these statements offered audiences a humorous glimpse of the humility and honesty with which Truth regarded herself. Yet, in a second sense, they also served as a persuasive vehicle for her critique of slavery and its inhumane treatment of her race. Truth blamed her circumstances for her ignorance of God, claiming that as a slave she was not allowed the opportunity to know about him. She frequently noted in recounting her life as a slave that she had “never had any learning, and while in bondage was not allowed to hear the Bible or any other books read,”⁴² that “she had been robbed of education—her rights.”⁴³ In her claim that slavery had succeeded not only in scarring her body but in crippling her mind, Truth effectively created a narrative vehicle for the audience to reexamine its own false assumptions about the natural inferiority of her race. Her statements about her own forced illiteracy and ignorance about God brought the question of the nature of her people from an abstract level to a personal one, and thus she was able to invoke in her audiences a process of self-confrontation for their complicity in her own mistreatment and that of other slaves. Moreover, for her largely Christian audiences, the crime of forcing slaves to be heathens had to have weighed particularly heavily upon them.

A second significant aspect of the stories Sojourner Truth told of her religious experiences was her recollection of her progression from anger and lack of faith in God to a conversion to love and a conversant relationship with him. Again, many variations of this narrative can be found in her speeches and the reports of her addresses, but most recounted her pleading to God for help, her dismay at his seeming abandonment of her, and her eventual transformation to a state of understanding and compassion. For example, in an 1871 speech in Boston, Massachusetts, she described her initial confusion at his refusal to answer her pleas: “When we were sole, I did what my mother told me; I said, O God, my mother tole me ef I asked you to make my marster an' misteress good, you'd do it, and dey did n't get good. [Laughter.] Why, says I, God, mebbe you can't do it. Kill 'em. [Laughter and applause.]”⁴⁴ Since this particular speech was reported in the later edition of the Narrative, it is likely that Frances Titus embellished the dialect and “horse sense” quality of this particular telling, as well as the reactions from the audience. Still, earlier reports and speeches indicated that Truth was fond of telling this same story, if not in as much of a self-deprecating way, such as in the following statements from 1853 addresses: “I did pray, but the people didn't get any better, and so I prayed that he would kill them, for they seemed to die quicker than they got good”⁴⁵; “She used to say she wished God would kill all the white people and not leave one for seed … and she used to think if she was God she would have made them good, and if God were she, she would not allow it.”⁴⁶ In each case where she invoked these references to her own lack of faith, Truth followed the account with the subsequent realization of the error of her own feelings of hatred. Consequently, as with the stories of her early ignorance about God, the tales of her wishing him to do evil were explained by the context: slavery had made her think such evil, desperate thoughts; slavery had transformed an innocent child into one full of hatred. These accounts of her lack of faith became further narrative evidence of the evil of the system and thereby further promoted the goodness of the slave.

Consequently, as Truth told her audiences, only when she was free of slavery was she able to discover the true God and to find her feelings of hatred replaced by love. In the 1853 speech in Williamsburgh, New York, she stated: “I prayed to God and he answered my prayers, and I have experienced his blessings. I said, I really believe I am a sinner, and that Jesus died for me! I had never been to Church, and never heard any one say this. I believe my only sin consisted in wishing harm to the white people, but now I love everybody.”⁴⁷ In another speech from 1853, she described more specifically the moment of her conversion: “Time has rolled on over my head, from one year to another, and a light has broke on me. Christ Jesus lighted up my mind, and I feel my soul filled with love. I began to love people, but I remembered the cruelty of master and missis, and thought I could never love them. But there came more light, and I said, yes, God, I love everybody.”⁴⁸ In these references to her own change of heart from hatred to love, Truth established the basic decency and morality of her stance. By grounding her perspective in the faith and truth of God, she challenged her audience's own false sense of morality. She held up the “light” of her own feelings as the standard against which the members of her audience had to measure themselves. Interestingly, even more vivid and dramatic accounts of Truth's conversion were provided by several of her contemporaries, as well as by later writers, wherein Truth was portrayed as being called by, and talking directly to, God at the moment of her conversion. Yet, these accounts all seemed to have been based on the extended and likely fictional dialogue between Truth and God as scripted by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her 1863 “Libyan Sibyl” article.⁴⁹ The more succinct versions of the tale in the extant speeches and reports probably were more reliable representations of Truth's own narrative style.

Coupled with accounts of the brutality of her slave experiences, the story of her religious conversion became a basis for Truth's rhetoric that was difficult to refute, precisely because it was located in the facts of her life. Moreover, the authority of Truth's stance was established because of her personal tone and open acknowledgment of her failings as well as her victories over these innocent errors. She presented herself as superior to those in her audience, especially the whites, who could not match her moral stance and her Christian values. Upon her death in 1883, the Detroit Post and Tribune noted: “There was a native nobility about her which broke down all barriers. ‘People ask me,’ she once said, ‘how I came to live so long and to keep my mind; and I tell them it is because I think of the great things of God, not the little things.’”⁵⁰

Truth's persona as a devout servant of God also was conveyed to audiences through the songs that she occasionally would sing to accompany her speeches. Many of these were religious in nature, including “There Is a Holy City,” “I Bless the Lord I've Got My Seal,” and “We Are Going Home.” Such songs blended messages of devotion to God with messages of liberation, as well as provided a common language and set of experiences for Truth to use in appealing to her white audiences. As Lawrence Levine argued in his analysis of slave culture, this transcendence of difference through religious music was rooted in the experiences of early revivals: “For blacks and whites who were commonly, though not invariably, separated at southern camp meetings, song easily breached the bounds of racial barriers and became the chief means of communication.”⁵¹ In her performance of religious songs, then, Truth employed a rhetorically powerful means of creating identification with her audiences.

As a final note, there is a curious difference evident in tone and approach in the one extant speech where Truth was reported as having spoken about her slave experience and her religious conversion to an audience that was “principally colored, with a sprinkling of white folks,” her 1853 address to the First Congregational Church in New York City.⁵² Here, when Truth related her narratives of her life and her religious beliefs, there was both a greater humility and a greater vividness of detail in her words, as well as a pointed critique of her audience's own approach to religion. First, she admitted her lack of a unique perspective in the face of this group:

She had held a great many meetings, and it seemed to her that the spirit of God had come upon her and enabled her to plead to her race, and not only to her own race but to the slave owners. She had always felt this difficulty: What was she to say to her own race on the subject of Slavery? They were the sufferers, and as strangers in the land, who had had little of God's footstool under their control.⁵³

Truth acknowledged the experiences of the audience as authentic and did not seek to place herself above them, but rather built a means of identification with them that was based in their common suffering. Later in this address, Truth used the references to her own experiences as a slave in similar ways, as a bridge to similarity, not as the means to superiority that they had served in her addresses to white audiences. Moreover, in this speech Truth's descriptions of her trials as a slave were more vivid, as were her critiques of whites: “It was indeed hard that their oppressors should bind them hand and foot, and ask them why did they not run”; “She did not wish unduly to ridicule the whites, but the blood and sweat and tears drawn from the black people were sufficient to cover the earth all over the United States.”⁵⁴ More interesting still was her critique of her own people in this speech, in the passages where she confronted them about their religious practices and their dismissal of her own attempts to minister to them:

She found her religion as she was at her work, as she washed her dishes, and all she could say or think was Jesus. She wanted to get among her own colored people and teach them this, but they repulsed and shoved her off; yet she felt she wanted to be doing. She used to go and hold prayer meetings at the houses of the people in the Five Points, then Chapel st., but she found they were always more inclined to hear great people, and she instanced the case of one colored woman who declining her prayers, said she had two or three ministers about! She (the Speaker) went off weeping while her dying sister was looked upon as a “glory of Zion.”⁵⁵

Initially, it is important to note that Truth's description of her conversion in this speech was unique among her addresses. Instead of attributing her love of God to a moment of light, she simply and eloquently expressed the presence of holiness in the everyday and mundane. Perhaps this strategy was designed to reach her own people on a more basic level, but this tale of simplicity also provided her the strategic contrast necessary for her dismissal of the sister who had passed her over in favor of the lure of flashier, “great” people such as the white ministers who readily attended to her “glory.” Truth seemed to be asking the audience to be careful to distinguish between the idols and the true God and was offering herself to them as their servant, even if they had wounded her with their pride in their past revulsion toward her. In this speech to a black audience, then, Truth constructed her character more subtly, substituting identification for sympathy and shading her superiority into supplication.

GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE: NARRATIVES OF RACE AND DIFFERENCE

In addition to the telling of her own life story, Truth's speeches frequently drew a stark contrast between the white and black races. This second tale certainly intersected with the story of her own experiences as a slave, but it also operated independent of these references to herself, particularly in her discourse appealing for western land for the freedmen. The story of white versus black in her rhetoric became the tale of the chosen and the damned, of the fundamental moral superiority of her own people, first in regard to the white slaveholders and later in regard to an apathetic white public in the Reconstruction era. Truth used this story to confront white audiences by shocking them into self-awareness; for black audiences, this tale functioned as strong grounds of identification and provided a means for solidarity among the group.

Truth's narrative of the contrast between black and white featured a plot in which the black race would be rewarded for its trials in this world by a guaranteed entrance into heaven, while the white race would be denied salvation because of its cruelty and hypocrisy here on earth. She thus invoked the tradition of the “black jeremiad,” a message in which warnings were issued by blacks to whites about the payment that would be demanded by God for their prejudices against and mistreatment of blacks. As Wilson Jeremiah Moses argued, such a jeremiad “was often directed at a white audience, and it bemoaned the sinfulness of slaveholders—fellow Americans who defied the natural and divine law that they were covenantally bound to uphold—and predicted God's punishment that was to come.”⁵⁶ In her speeches Truth proclaimed that the black race had been chosen to work to eradicate evil, had served well, and alone deserved the rewards of heaven.

In her jeremiad, Truth contrasted the justice due to the black race against the judgment to come for the whites. According to this narrative, the only ones who had suffered enough to deserve entrance into heaven were her own people. This jeremiad was evident throughout her addresses regarding race, from the earliest antislavery speeches to the later appeals for western land. For example, as reported by the Liberator, in her 1854 speech at Framingham, Massachusetts, she admonished her white audience:

The promises of Scripture were all for the black people, and God would recompense them for all their sufferings in this world. One day they would meet the poor slave in heaven, ‘his robes washed in the blood of the lamb,’ coming through much tribulation (‘you know who that means,’ said Sojourner; ‘it don't mean you; white folks don't suffer tribulation; it means the black people, and those friends who have suffered with them,’) to peace and joy in the kingdom. ‘Wait a little longer,’ said she, ‘and I shall hail you where slaveholders do not come, and where bloodhounds cannot enter.’⁵⁷

Truth's language in this passage was quite strong; her imagery of the cleansing blood shed by slaves, opposed to the view of slaveholders and their bloodhounds halted at the gates of heaven, was vivid. These powerful depictions became the vehicle for her jeremiad, setting black apart from white, admonishing her adversaries of the final sentence to be imposed upon them. This proclamation of white damnation was a central theme in Truth's rhetoric, exemplified by the consistency of her use of such images throughout her years as a public advocate. For example, she repeated this same warning over thirty years later, when, as reported by the Syracuse Standard, she confronted an audience with such sentiments in 1871: “She was quite sure her own race must be referred to by the Revelator as those who came ‘up out of great tribulation.’ The black race had suffered intensely, and hence they were the ones who had ‘tribulated. It is de black race, and God will do justice to ‘em, but whar will you all appear?’”⁵⁸ Truth's narratives of racial difference drew upon the traditional form and substance of the American jeremiad, the proclamation that the nation had strayed from its basic principles and consequently would suffer for its sins. Yet unlike her black contemporaries, she used this rhetorical form to admonish slavery as well as to promote her proposal to create colonies in the West for the freedmen who were languishing in cities without economic means or hope for advancement. Consequently, in her hands the jeremiad form became broader, encompassing several strategies she used to depict the goodness of her people and the evils of the white race. Two central contrasts in the characters of blacks and whites were established through Truth's jeremiad narrative: joy and love versus hatred and disparagement, and action for change versus apathy.

Love and Hatred. The first theme in this story of race, love in contrast to hatred, flowed directly from Truth's life story and her religious conversion. She used her own transformation from hatred for the whites to love and forgiveness toward them to ground her narratives about the general character of the two races. Importantly, she was careful to point out in her speeches that, even after her conversion and growth of understanding, she did not believe that the two races were equal but believed that black people were more deserving of rewards both on earth and in heaven. To develop this tale, Truth rejected the notion that blacks should aspire to emulate whites, and instead she forcefully proclaimed her own pride in her color. For example, Parker Pillsbury reported the events at a meeting where a young law student had stated that Negroes were inferior and fit only to be slaves, suggesting that “if any of them showed intelligence it was because they had some white blood, for as a race they were but the connecting link between man and animals.”⁵⁹ Pillsbury described how, when the speaker had finished, Truth rose up to answer him:

She referred to the young lawyer's comparison of negroes to the brutes, and cried out: ‘Now, I am the pure African. You can all see that plain enough.’ She straightened herself up proudly and repeated: ‘I am the pure African; none of your white blood runs in my veins.’ And then she uttered a fierce scoff at the greedy passions of the white race, which had made it almost a marvel that any negro should be of unmixed blood.⁶⁰

In this instance Truth effectively established both a physical and a moral distinction between herself and the others present, between black and white. She expressed a fundamental pride in her heritage, thus rejecting her opponent's argument as well as reversing it. She succeeded in portraying the whites as the brutes who savaged innocent black women, and the blacks as the only ones proud and intelligent enough to know and speak the truth about them. To an audience of her own people Truth was reported to have made a similar proclamation of her racial pride: “She used to say, ‘why was I black, when if I was white I could have plenty of food and clothes?’ But now she gloried in her color. She rejoiced in the color that God had been pleased to give her, and she was well satisfied with it.”⁶¹ For both her black and white audiences, Truth established a clear sense of self-respect for her race and voiced an evident distaste for the idea that whites serve as the role model for her people.

Truth also carefully distinguished between the hatred whites had for her race and the love and personal sacrifices her own people had extended to them. In many of her speeches she asked why the whites so disparaged her race and suggested that indeed the reverse ought to be true because of the debt whites owed the blacks for their servitude. Yet, the blacks were too good to succumb to the sin of hatred as whites had. In emphasizing the positive traits of her people Truth drew upon a basic black messianic myth, that of the nobility and Christ-like nature of the slave who exhibited “qualities of kindliness, patience, humility, and great-hearted altruism, even in the face of abuse.”⁶² As Truth questioned the hatred of whites, her queries usually led into a small narrative about the contrasting faithfulness and giving nature of the blacks. For example, in her 1854 speech in Framingham, Massachusetts, she said to a white audience:

God would yet execute his judgments upon the white people for their oppression and cruelty. She had often asked white people why God should have more mercy on Anglo-Saxons than on Africans, but they had never given her any answer; the reason was, they hadn't got it to give. (Laughter.) Why did the white people hate the blacks? Were they not as good as they were brought up? They were a great deal better than the white people had brought them up. (Cheers.) The white people owed the colored race a big debt, and if they paid it all back, they wouldn't have anything left for seed. (Laughter.) All they could do was to repent, and have the debt forgiven them. The colored people had labored and suffered for the white people, their children had been sold to help educate ministers of the gospel; and why did they hate them? If they could not answer that question now, they would have to answer it before God.⁶³

In this passage, Truth described the personal trauma sustained by her own people due to attitudes held by whites that had no possible justification, and for which they indeed would suffer when called to answer for their deeds. Truth's statements reflected the perspective typical of a messianic people, who, because of their great suffering, see themselves as “chosen or anointed people who will lead the rest of the world in the direction of righteousness.”⁶⁴ She proposed that the black people were more deserving of admiration than the whites who oppressed them because they were able to transcend their circumstances and had emerged as superior to their persecutors.

Additionally, Truth held herself up as an example of the blacks who, far from hating those who tormented them, in fact felt a great sense of Christian love for them despite all they had done. In a report of her 1851 speech at an antislavery convention in Rochester, New York, Truth expressed these sentiments:

Though she has suffered all the ills of slavery, she forgives all who have wronged her most freely. She said her home should be open to the man who had held her as a slave, and who had so much wronged her. She would feed him and take care of him if he was hungry and poor. ‘O friends,’ said she, ‘pity the poor slaveholder, and pray for him. It troubles me more than any thing else, what will become of the poor slaveholder, in all his guilt and all his impenitence. God will take care of the poor trampled slave, but where will the slaveholder be when eternity begins?’⁶⁵

In this statement Truth portrayed herself and her people as full of charitable feelings toward those who once oppressed them. As the recipients of God's teachings to love each other, the blacks had set themselves apart from, and above, the whites who had ignored divine law in their transgressions against them. Truth repeated this theme many times, such as in her 1871 address at Tremont Temple in Boston: “Den I said, Yea, God, I'll lobe ev'ybuddy an' de w'ite pepul too … Only think ob it! Ain't it wonderful dat God gives lobe enough to de Ethiopins to lobe you?”⁶⁶ In both of these passages, Truth created a clever reversal by transforming the powerful white slaveholder into an object of pity. This narrative inversion allowed her to subvert the dominance of whites while elevating the worth of her own race.

The jeremiadic message in Truth's narrative about color was particularly strong in a speech she delivered in 1863 at the State Sabbath School Convention in her adopted home of Battle Creek, Michigan. According to the report of this speech, Truth addressed her message about the evils of racial prejudice to the children in the assembly:

“Children,” she said, “who made your skin white? Was it not God? Who made mine black? Was it not the same God? Am I to blame, therefore, because my skin is black? Does it not cast a reproach on our Maker to despise a part of his children because he has been pleased to give them a black skin? Indeed, children, it does; and your teachers ought to tell you so, and root up, if possible, the great sin of prejudice against color from your minds. While Sabbath-school teachers know of this great sin, and not only do not teach their pupils that it is a sin, but too often indulge in it themselves, can they expect God to bless them or the children? Does not God love colored children as well as white children? and did not the same Savior die to save the one as well as the other? If so, white children must know that if they go to heaven, they must go there without their prejudice against color, for in heaven black and white are one in the love of Jesus.”⁶⁷

By invoking the simple story of creation, Truth transferred the undeniable authority of biblical Scripture to her argument against prejudice. Her words to the children offered a gentle reminder of the teachings they had learned and admonished them to be sure to love the black children if indeed they wished to enter heaven. For the white adults present at the convention, however, her words were much more accusatory. By intoning against the Sabbath school teachers who themselves knew better, yet taught the children wrongly, Truth added another sin to the list for which whites later would have to answer. In this case, it was the deliberate perversion of young minds and the perpetuation of hatred across generations, a clear “reproach on our Maker.” Because whites willfully transgressed against the clear teachings of the creation story, as well as ignored the meaning of the Savior's sacrifice for all people, not just themselves, they would suffer in the next life the exclusion from heaven. Moreover, the Sabbath school address featured another central theme of Truth's rhetoric, the portrayal of her race as innocents who were disparaged for characteristics that were not faults but God-given traits to be respected.

Activity versus Apathy. In her later speeches appealing for western land for the freedmen, Truth developed further her negative portrait of the character of whites. Besides being full of hatred for her people during times of slavery, now they were guilty of apathy toward them in their freedom. While blacks had shown they were willing to work, to strive, and to serve, whites had left them nothing for which to strive. Truth provided several short narrative details in her speeches to contrast the endeavoring spirit of her people with the laziness and insensibility of the whites. For example, in a lecture at Franklin Hall, she was reported to have confronted the audience for their inaction: “She thought she had a work to do, and had considerable faith in what she was accomplishing; but she said to her audience, ‘With all your opportunities for readin' and writin' you don't take hold and do anything. My God, I wonder what you are in the world for!’”⁶⁸ In this statement Truth accomplished two important contrasts: the value of her own actions in light of the impotence of whites, and her own worth, albeit as illiterate, in light of their wasted educations. She used even stronger terms to confront another audience for such false and useless airs in an address in Rochester, New York. First, Truth invoked her “horse sense” character to set herself apart from the relative ignorance of her audience: “You ask me what to do for dem? Do you want a poor old creeter who do' no how to read to tell edecated people what to do? I give you de hint, and you ought to know what to do. But if you do n't, I kin tell you.”⁶⁹ Later in the speech, as reported in the Narrative, Truth told the audience:

You are de cause of de brutality of these poor creeters. For you're de children of those who enslaved dem. Dat's what I want to say. I wish dis hall was full to hare me. I do n't want to say anything agin Anna Dickinsin because she is my friend, but if she come to talk here about a woman you know nothing about, and no one knows whether there was such a woman [Joan of Arc, on whom Dickinson lectured] or not, you would fill dis place. You want to hear nonsense. I come to tell something which you ought to listen to. You are ready to help de heathen in foreign lands, but don't care for the heathen right about you. I want you to sign petitions to send to Washington.⁷⁰

Truth berated the audience for both intellectual and moral sins in this speech. First, she attacked them for their lack of true intellect and their easy distraction toward trivial matters. In accusing them of wanting to listen to nonsense rather than reality, Truth built a strong contrast between the crassness of whites and the sense and character of herself and her cause. Second, she again isolated a sin against God in their missionary zeal for those of foreign nations, while they ignored the plight of the freedmen in their own nation. This second transgression was especially grievous in light of the complicity of the audience in slavery: although no longer slaveholders themselves, they still were guilty by virtue of being the descendants of the oppressors. As with the statement in the Franklin Hall speech, this passage displayed Truth's sense of outrage and indignation at a callous white people who continually violated God's teachings and wasted the gifts he had granted them.

The expression of her anger at the moral and intellectual inertia displayed by whites became more powerful still in addresses where Truth characterized her audience's lack of involvement in the western lands issue as religious hypocrisy. This viewpoint was expressed strongly in her speech in Orange, New Jersey, in 1874, wherein Truth contrasted the urgency of action on behalf of her people's mistreatment against the procrastination of many who believed such deeds were not necessary:

She spoke of the misery and degradation she had seen among the colored people in the South, of the Black Maria full of them driving up to the Washington police court, of their being thrown into jails, and of their children growing up in vice and ignorance, and said that it was a shame and an abomination, and that the people did not know these things simply because they did not see them. She had heard it said that these evils would die out in time, but they would not die out, ‘they must be learned out.’ God looks down on these things and sees them, and we all ought to feel that the world should be better because we are in it. She believed in being doers of the word, not hearers only, and in doing something to show we are workers in the vineyard.⁷¹

Truth provided a powerful statement of religious and moral principle in this speech. By characterizing herself as a doer, not a hearer, she established herself as a true servant of God, unlike the hypocritical standpattism she saw in whites. She refuted arguments that the plight of her people reflected a natural order or their true characteristics and insisted instead that such evils as the mistreatment of blacks must be “learned out,” not just expected to diminish on their own. Because whites again had shirked their responsibility to improve upon the lot of her people, they were not true workers for God. Following the traditions of both Christianity and black messianism, she proposed that the only authentic religious expression was in the actions in this world, not the passive acceptance of the promises of the Scriptures.

Among the songs Truth frequently sang, two were related to her message about the black jeremiad and the potential for liberation in self-empowerment. The first is the religious song “We Are Going Home,” which in at least one version that exists was designated as “Sojourner's Favorite Song” and printed on a flyer, most likely to be sold at meetings where she spoke.⁷² The lyrics of the song portrayed a vision of advancement to heaven:

We are going home, we have visions bright
Of that holy land, that world of light
Where the long dark night is past,
And the morning of eternity has come at last,
Where the weary Saints no more shall roam,
But dwell in a sunny, and peaceful home.
Where the brow, celestial gems shall crown
And waves of bliss are dashing 'round.(73)

Although the song clearly was a religious hymn, the words were ambiguous enough for Truth's audiences to have interpreted a second message in the lyrics, hearing it as a specific tale of blacks' ascension to heaven. This use of sacred hymns to convey descriptions of the rewards blacks expected for their suffering was a common rhetorical strategy among slave communities, and thus these songs served to provide affirming images of self-worth.⁷⁴

A second song Truth performed, “The Valiant Soldiers,” described the black men who had served in the Union army during the Civil War. The lyrics, which Truth composed to the tune of “John Brown's Body” (later, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”),⁷⁵ described not only the bravery of the colored troops, but the rewards due to them for their devotion to the nation:

We are done with hoeing cotton, we are done with
          hoeing corn;
We are colored Yankee soldiers as sure as you
          are born.
When massa hears us shouting, he will think 'tis
          Gabriel's horn,
As we go marching on.—Cho.
They will have to pay us wages, the wages of
          their sin,
They will have to bow their foreheads to their colored
          kith and kin;
They will have to give us house-room, or the roof will
          tumble in,
As we go marching on.—Cho.(76)

The words in these lyrics clearly echoed the language of Truth's speeches about the races: both invoked the black jeremiad and warned that whites would have to pay for their sins by giving blacks the economic and social rights due them, lest they suffer the wrath of God.

Truth's invocation of the jeremiad in her rhetoric served several functions for her. Unlike her use of the story of her slave life to evoke identification and sympathy from the white audiences, her narrative of racial difference created a clear contrast and division between herself and this audience. First, by depicting her people as God's chosen, she was able to provide a justification for her own activism as well as issue a stern threat against those who disparaged or ignored the sufferings of her race. The claim of the promises of the Scripture as exclusive to blacks gave her a means to provoke her white audiences into awareness and a state of guilt. Her vivid language and her often confrontational tone added to the separation of her own people from the evils of the whites. She sought to use the jeremiad to elicit support for the abolition and the western lands causes by motivating her audience to act in order to recapture some of the promise of heaven for themselves. Hence, although Truth expressed her own altruism toward the white race, she attempted to move them to action by stimulating their own self-interest. Coupled with other narrative dimensions of her speeches, Truth's messianic view of her own actions and of the salvation of her people offered white audiences a strong vision of the shrewdness, strength, and solidarity of the black race.

Among the extant speeches and reports of Truth's rhetoric there is only one document in which it was clearly indicated that she was addressing a black audience about race differences, yet its contrasts in tone and topic to her speeches delivered to white audiences are important to note. In its report of this 1853 speech in New York City, the New York Tribune noted, “A respectable audience of colored people assembled at their Church, in Anthony st. last evening to listen to an address from a woman of their race, named Sojourner Truth.”⁷⁷ For this black audience, Truth began her speech by relating a few details of her life story, but primarily the lecture was devoted to the expression of her messianic vision of the future of the race. The development of the jeremiad in this address focused not on the judgment to come for whites but upon the deliverance of her own people. For example, Truth developed a theme of hope for this audience:

She went on to talk of the condition of the colored people and their prospects. They were gradually being thrust out from every menial occupation by their white brethren; but she believed this was ominous of a better future. They were being prepared for some great change that would take place ere long. She was decidedly opposed to the colonization project; they must stay, and a short time would show that that was the best course.⁷⁸

In this statement Truth echoed the traditional view of black messianism, that “their enslavement did not necessarily symbolize a curse or a mark of God's disfavor; it boded rather that He had some great plan in store for them.”⁷⁹ Hence, their sufferings in this world reflected that the black race had been chosen for something special. Interestingly, Truth diverged from those who were seeking an African colony for American blacks. Instead, implied in Truth's address was a belief that the promises of America would yet be fulfilled for her people, and she insisted that this change would come quickly for them if only they had patience and faith.

Additionally, this speech comprised a series of narratives about white ineptitude, greed, and hypocrisy. Many of these stories were humorous, yet, unlike the “horse sense” character Truth evoked for her white audiences, the laughter here came from the audience's identification with Truth's sarcasm and biting wit. Instead of ridiculing herself, the whites took on those characteristics in her narrative. For example, Truth's account of the contrast between black workers of the past and white workers of the present was thickly layered with sarcasm:

When the coloured people were waiters, and did all the common and lower kinds of work the streets were clean; … Well in those times, twenty-five or thirty years ago, the streets were kept nice and clean without costing the people a penny. Now the white people have taken it in hand, the dirt lies in the streets till it gets too thick, and flies all about into the shops and people's eyes, and then they sift water all over it, and make it into mud, and that's what they do over and over again, without ever dreaming of such an easy thing as taking it away. In the course of time it becomes too thick, and too big a nuisance and then they go to work right straight off with picks and crow bars, and pull up the stones, above the dirt, and then go on again! [Laughter].⁸⁰

With this expansive chronicle of the folly of whites, Truth sought to build a relationship with her audience of blacks by tapping into a source of common experience and frustration. Instead of bemoaning the blacks' lack of economic means directly, Truth established the injustice of white ascendancy by illustrating their bumbling absurdity. That such silly people were the ones who oppressed the black race only underscored the message trumpeted earlier by Truth, that a change had to come. Justice clearly was due the black race for their common sense, their hard work, and their perseverance. Moreover, the satire offered a vehicle for Truth to propose her own solution to the poor prospects facing her people. Rather than stay in the cities and complain bitterly about white ineptness, she proposed: “My colored brothers and sisters, there's a remedy for this; where I was lately lecturing out in Pennsylvania, the farmers wanted good men and women to work their farms on shares for them. Why can't you go out there?—and depend upon it, in the course of time you will get to be independent.”⁸¹ Truth used the narrative about white folly to empower her own people, as she encouraged them to put the abilities they knew they had to work in pursuit of their own advancement.

Near the end of this address Truth also offered a pointed critique of white religion, specifically of the hypocrisy of the white clergy. As the New York Tribune reported: “She commented somewhat severely on the modern style of preaching the Gospel. The parsons went away into Egypt among the bones of the dead Pharaohs and mummies, and talked about what happened thousands of years ago but quite forgot that the living present around them teemed with the sternest realities.”⁸² Truth argued that the white religion concerned itself too much with abstractions and thus failed to engage in works of any importance in this world. Moreover, they used their influence to build useless monuments to themselves, rather than spread the wealth of the church to those who really needed it. Truth gave the audience a vivid description of this waste: “Many of the churches were big, lumbering things, covering up costly space and doing good to no one. While many of the citizens of this metropolis were living in low dens and sky lighted garrets, these immense buildings, which would comfortably lodge them, were about one-third filled once in the week, and for the other six days allowed to lie unoccupied, and a dead loss.”⁸³ Clearly, Truth told her audience, no help was to come to them from these charlatans who built nothing but monuments to their own egos. Instead the black race was responsible for rising up and working on its own behalf.

In contrast to her speeches to white audiences, then, this speech illustrated how Truth altered her appeals in order to engender identification rather than difference within an audience composed of her own people. Her humor was used to promote a sense of pride and affiliation in her fellow blacks, as opposed to its function in distancing her from her white adversaries. Through vivid narratives illustrating the folly of whites, Truth gave her black audience a means to see themselves not only as superior to them in common sense but fundamentally more righteous in the eyes of God. Truth's message to the whites was admonishment, but to her own race she held out the promise of salvation through their own empowerment.

DEFINING WOMAN'S CHARACTER: “I AM A WOMAN'S RIGHTS”

From the factual grounding and authority of character established through her life story, Truth was able to build her arguments about the social issues she advocated, including the woman's rights debate of the nineteenth century. Truth occasionally spoke at woman's rights meetings, sharing the platform with other renowned advocates, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances D. Gage, and Lucy Stone, although she never was integral to the leadership structure of their organizations. From accounts of these speaking appearances found in newspaper reports and the reminiscences of these fellow women, nonetheless, it was apparent that Truth was a favorite among audiences. Much of this appeal rested in her humor and wit, but much of the impact of her presence also must be attributed to her narrative style and the challenge she presented to the other woman's rights advocates.

As one of the few African American speakers to address these gatherings, Truth's stories functioned to establish a fundamental claim for woman's equality in general, as well as to specifically ground a demand for these rights to include herself and her black sisters. Consequently, Truth's status among these other speakers had to have been a mixture of curiosity and confrontation. Not only did Truth present her positions in a unique style, including among her speeches various references to her own experience and to biblical stories and common aphorisms, but she often began and ended her public appearances with a song. To include her in the proceedings at these meetings certainly must have brought a sense of variety to these sessions, but Truth's presence in and of itself, as well as her use of narratives, also confronted the audience by forcing them to extend beyond their limited definitions of what constituted women's experience and women's capabilities.

Truth's discourses on woman's rights follow a consistent pattern, whereby the definition of woman nearly always was established in contrast to the traits attributed to men. She situated both of these characters into a larger narrative story of the struggle for equality within the nation as a whole, where the implied question regarded which of these individuals had the better character required for participation in the political and social process. The contrast she drew, for the most part, was a simple one, with woman defined as the moral, honest, hardworking, and faithful citizen, while man was described as the antithesis of these traits. In a few references, the woman character also was rounded out with some flaws, but the man's character was represented quite consistently in negative terms. With this basic contrast between woman and man, Truth was able to create messages rich with imagery and full of force and pointed critique. As the reports of her speeches often showed, these stories of woman's strength and man's inadequacy were received with much laughter and applause from her woman suffrage audiences, as well as much heckling from her male detractors. Importantly, Truth's arguments for woman's rights were difficult to deny because of the sheer power of her narratives: they functioned to simplify complex issues through her employment of value-laden comparisons, and they spoke to basic, commonsense truths of experience.

Two central themes regarding the character of, and differences between, the sexes were established in Truth's narratives about woman and man. First, she used the theme of physical labor to define herself and other women as capable to meet the test of voting and other tasks of citizenship. Second, Truth employed biblical references to define the fundamental morality and faithfulness of women, while she used animal imagery to define men as crude, selfish, dishonest, and deceptive. Later in her life, Truth also confronted her audience of women with narratives that critiqued their own timidity and vanity.

Physical Labors. Any discussion of Truth's rhetoric about woman's rights must begin with her best-known speech, delivered at a Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851 [“And ar'n't I a woman?”]. Although Truth often spoke about woman's rights throughout her life, this particular speech has been used most often by rhetorical critics, feminist writers, and historians to represent her views about the intersection between race and sex, particularly the key statement attributed to her in this speech, the question “A'n't I a Woman?”⁸⁴ However, it is important to note that five different versions of this speech exist, two attributed to Frances D. Gage and three from 1851 newspapers. The version most often reprinted and quoted was attributed to Gage in the 1882 edition of the History of Woman Suffrage. Although similar to the report Gage originally published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard on May 3, 1863, there also were significant differences between them, most notably the alteration of the signature phrase from “Ar'n't I a Woman?” in 1863 to “A'n't I a Woman?” in 1882.⁸⁵ Additionally, neither phrase appears in the three other versions of the speech from 1851 newspapers,⁸⁶ making Gage's later version, published thirty-one years after the speech was delivered, the only one in which the phrase “A'n't I a Woman?” appeared. As historians Carleton Mabee and Susan Mabee Newhouse argued, the textual differences among the different reports of the speeches and the amount of time that elapsed between Truth's speech and Gage's subsequent reports both raise significant questions about the accuracy of Gage's texts. Truth actually may not have delivered her famous phrase, but rather it may have been an embellishment added by Gage, echoing her own poetic and literary style more than Truth's actual words.⁸⁷ Yet, even if Gage had coined the specific “A'n't I a Woman?” question for her report, the other versions of the speech from 1851 demonstrated that Truth at least implied a similar meaning, if not the precise phrasing. In the Anti-Slavery Bugle text, she was quoted as saying, “I am a woman's rights,” while the New York Tribune reported “she said she was a woman.”

Additionally, only the Gage versions of the speech included the also often-quoted passage where Truth drew a distinction between herself and white women: “Dat man ober dar say dat woman needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have de best place eberywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gives me any best place!”⁸⁸ This textual difference might be explained by the desire of Gage to dramatize Truth's words, as well as to attribute to her more impact on the Akron convention than she actually may have had. As Mabee and Newhouse proposed, Gage's embellishments also might have been made in an attempt to mirror the style in which Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Libyan Sibyl” article presented Truth, particularly since Stowe's renowned piece had been published just prior to Gage's report in 1863.⁸⁹ Among the versions of the Akron speech, Gage's texts also were the only ones that rendered Truth's words into a thick dialect, indicating that Gage intentionally wanted to portray Truth as a particular type of “horse sense” character, much as Stowe had done. Indeed, the 1882 Gage text used a more extreme dialect style than did the 1863 version, changing “have” into “hab” and “give” into “gib”, for example. Because of the unreliability of Gage's texts, then, throughout this analysis the Anti-Slavery Bugle version is quoted. Among the reports written in 1851 it was the most extensive; moreover, because it was written in first person, it thereby reflects an attempt to reconstruct, rather than just report, the content of Truth's speech.

The Akron speech illustrated how Truth employed the theme of physical labor and strength to stake a claim for her own rights as a woman and a person. She used a comparison of her own labors to those of men in order to ground an argument that since no differences between the sexes existed in ability, no distinction should be made in terms of rights:

I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now.⁹⁰

In this passage Truth rejected the portrait of woman as weak and substituted for it a vivid image of her own strength and equal standing to man. Moreover, coupled with her impressive physical presence, this statement provided a strong pronouncement that both her womanhood and her personhood were sufficient and valid claims to the rights that she demanded. Consequently, through her natural rights appeals Truth challenged her audience to acknowledge both her status as a woman and her fundamental humanity, even though she was a member of a different race.

This theme of woman's physical labor served again as grounding for Truth's argument about rights for women in two later speeches, both delivered at the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association in New York in 1867. Although three different reports exist of the first speech from May 9, in this case the differences among the texts were minor. None reported Truth's speech in dialect, and although slight differences existed in some sentences, in all cases at least two of the three versions provided verification for these statements. For example, although the New York Tribune text did not include a sentence in which Truth refers to having to answer for “deeds done in her body,” both the History of Woman Suffrage version and the New York Times report included this reference. For the purposes of this analysis the History of Woman Suffrage version primarily is quoted because it was the most extensive and inclusive of the three different texts.⁹¹

In this 1867 speech Truth again spoke about having labored as much as men, yet not having received as much as they in return for her work. She began the speech with an appeal rooted in the idea that one's physical body was the foundation of an individual's claim to human rights: “I feel that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my body just as much as a man, I have a right to have just as much as a man.”⁹² In addition, Truth used the specific tale of her labor to illustrate her claim. In this 1867 speech she offered an extension to the function this narrative served in grounding her argument for equality in the Akron speech:

I have done a great deal of work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay; so with the German women. They work in the field and do as much work, but do not get the pay. We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. … What we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough in our own pockets; and may be you will ask us for money.⁹³

In this passage Truth used the theme of labor to transcend arguments about difference in two ways. First, she extended the physical labor story to propose a need for equal pay for equal work, proposing that fairness demanded that she should receive the same rewards for the same abilities. Second, in this rendition of the narrative the argument about labor transcended Truth's personal claim to these rights and included an appeal to solidarity across women's groups in her reference to the German women. Moreover, she exhibited a keen sense of the fundamental importance of economic independence in relation to women's overall rights as persons. She challenged her largely middle-class audience of women to recognize the centrality of economic issues, even though they, within their more privileged social positions, had not been faced with the reality of such needs themselves.

Truth delivered two additional speeches to the Equal Rights Association meeting on the following day, May 10, 1867. Particularly in the second speech, Truth continued her narrative about physical labor by relating an anecdote about women's work at digging stumps. She used this story to refute arguments that women were not capable of voting:

I would like to go up to the polls myself. (Laughter). I own a little house in Battle Creek, Michigan. Well, every year I got a tax to pay. Taxes, you see, be taxes. Well, a road tax sounds large. Road tax, school tax, and all these things. Well, there was women there that had a house as well as I. They taxed them to build a road, and they went on the road and worked. It took 'em a good while to get a stump up. (Laughter). Now, that shows that women can work. If they can dig up stumps they can vote. (Laughter). It is easier to vote than dig stumps. (Laughter). It doesn't seem hard work to vote, though I have seen some men that had a hard time of it. (Laughter).⁹⁴

Truth achieved a clever rhetorical reversal of arguments against women's ability to vote in this example. Not only did she invert the logic of male suffrage opponents who argue that voting would harm women's delicate sensibilities, but she also questioned their intellectual credibility. The result was that Truth portrayed men, the secondary characters in her story, as the true inferiors to women like herself, who were able to see through their boasting and posturing. Additionally, she subtly increased her own credibility in relation to such arguments by referring to her economic independence and, hence, political savvy as a homeowner and taxpayer.

From these appeals to the force of physical labor, then, Truth was able to argue that no justifiable differences could be defended when comparing men to women. Curiously, on the question of intelligence, however, Truth's speeches appeared to draw a distinction between men and women, as well as between white and black women specifically. Yet, upon closer scrutiny, what at first seemed to be statements denigrating women in fact served as the means for Truth's ridicule of men, as well as support for her appeal for the vote specifically for black women. For example, in her Akron speech, she stated: “As for intellect, all I can say is, if woman have a pint and man a quart—why cant she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much,—for we cant take more than our pint'll hold.”⁹⁵ Here Truth described a difference between men and women in relation to their intellectual capacities, yet this distinction in turn served as the vehicle for her to further ridicule the men who would not yield even the little bit of rights women needed. Similarly, in her first speech to the Equal Rights Association, Truth described a difference between white and black women:

White women are a great deal smarter, and know more than colored women, while colored women do not know scarcely anything. They go out washing, which is about as high as a colored woman gets, and their men go about idle, strutting up and down; and when the women come home, they ask for their money and take it all, and then scold because there is no food.⁹⁶

While this statement could be read as Truth's admission that white women were essentially superior to black women, a more accurate interpretation is that she saw a difference between the two groups of women in economic status and thereby in education. Hence, this narrative about black women's difficulty with their husbands served to underscore Truth's argument about the dire need for black women to be given the vote, not just black men. Because they were not allowed to rise any higher than the economic status of washerwoman, the black women then at least needed to be protected by the vote, lest they be further dominated by both the whites and the men of their own race.

Biblical Women and Animalistic Men. A second major strategy Truth used in the development of her narrative about the need for woman's rights was to define the character traits to be attached to each sex. Her primary rhetorical tactic was to use biblical references to describe woman's positive traits and animal images to describe the negative traits of man. In her speeches these strategies yielded a blend of powerful comparisons and biting satire that clearly was entertaining for her audiences. Additionally, while the tactic of using biblical references in the service of woman's rights arguments was not unique to Truth, for her, such narratives served an important ethical as well as a didactic function. When she claimed, as in her Akron speech, “I cant read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible,”⁹⁷ she in essence established her knowledge and credibility as equal to that of any other and effectively succeeded in casting the Bible as the ultimate authority in arguments about woman's rights. Thus, Truth strategically put her devout, religious persona in service of her arguments about women.

The reliance upon biblical references allowed Truth to provide a well-rounded portrait of woman's character, such that even though she might possess some flaws, she still was morally superior to man. In particular, Truth used narratives about biblical women in two ways. First, she occasionally used brief references to women such as Mary and Martha, Mary of Nazareth, and Eve to ground arguments about why women were deserving of their rights, especially in comparison to men. She also used these brief narrative anecdotes to offer a concise retort to her opponents' perspectives. For example, in her Akron speech she employed the story of Mary and Martha to illustrate the reciprocal faith of women and Jesus: “The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept—and Lazarus came forth.”⁹⁸ As these two women represented woman's loyalty and devotion to God, so too did all women have this trait. Consequently, Truth argued, women were the chosen sex and thus must have rights in accordance with their God-given status. Also in the Akron speech were two illustrations of Truth's use of such brief narratives as a strategy of refutation. She stated: “I have heard the bible and have heard that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again.”⁹⁹ In this brief reference Truth was able to refute a common argument among women's rights opponents regarding women's incapacities by inverting it and creating instead an argument for fairness from it. Later in the speech, she asked: “And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and woman who bore him. Man, where is your part?”¹⁰⁰ Here, the retort was more cutting, with Truth suggesting almost an impotence in man's role in religion and in life.

Second, Truth sometimes employed biblical stories about women as the narrative and organizing frames for an entire address. In contrast to the function of the quick anecdote as illustration or report, these larger narrative frames provided meaning and force for the entire speech in which they were invoked. Among Truth's rhetoric regarding woman's rights, her September 7, 1853, address to the Woman's Rights meeting at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City and the first of her two speeches to the Equal Rights Association on May 10, 1867, also in New York City, provide the best illustrations of this strategy.

In her 1853 speech to what sometimes is called the “mob convention” because of the disruptive crowds that faced the speakers, Truth used the story of the Hebrew slave queen Esther as the unifying frame for her remarks. Three versions of this speech exist, one from History of Woman Suffrage and two from contemporary newspapers. Additionally, the New York Daily Times published an editorial the following day criticizing the behavior of the rowdy crowd.¹⁰¹ Although there were some textual differences among the reports, most notably an error in the New York Tribune report that stated Truth talked about Herod, not Haman, all of them noted the interruptions of the crowd and generally correspond in regard to the content of Truth's remarks. The important variation between the two extended versions of the speech was that the History of Woman Suffrage text dramatized the situation, as well as embellished Truth's style, while the New York Daily Times text reported the speech with the hecklers' comments interjected among her statements. Consequently, the History of Woman Suffrage text, written with the benefit of reflection, provided a political commentary through its description of the crowd's reaction to Truth:

Sojourner combined in herself, as an individual, the two most hated elements of humanity. She was black, and she was a woman, and all the insults that could be cast upon color and sex were together hurled at her; but there she stood, calm and dignified, a grand, wise woman, who could neither read nor write, and yet with deep insight could penetrate the very soul of the universe about her.¹⁰²

These comments rendered Truth a rather heroic figure, as well as implied that the crowd's reaction to her was overwhelmingly negative. In contrast, the comments from the crowd included in the New York Daily Times report were both negative and positive.

As documented by the Times, Truth encountered some racist heckling during this speech, such as from one young man, “whose education had evidently been greviously neglected,” who called for “an oyster stew with plenty of crackers,” as well as “a perfect storm of applause, hisses, groans, and undignified ejaculations” as she rose to speak.¹⁰³ In response to her audience's “unmannerly, unhandsome, and ill-timed calls for bivalves,” she began by characterizing her detractors as animals: “I see some of you have got the spirit of a goose, and a good many of you have got the spirit of snakes.”¹⁰⁴ Truth's angry response to the crowd on this occasion presented a somewhat different persona from the comic superiority that she usually exhibited; however, her initial defiance yielded supportive responses from the audience, in comments such as “cries of ‘Go on’—‘That's the style’—‘Show your pluck’—‘Give it to them.’”¹⁰⁵ The situation facing Truth thus was disruptive and insulting to her, but she was not altogether without allies among the audience.

Truth used the story of Esther and Haman to provide a foundation for her appeal for woman's rights in this speech.¹⁰⁶ While this narrative became part of the grounds for Truth's admonitions of the crowd, it also softened the initial defiance in Truth's persona. In the biblical account, Esther was a Jewish woman who had become the queen of King Ahasuerus, yet her ethnic identity had been concealed from him. Later, Ahasuerus promoted Haman to an official position in the kingdom, but Esther's surrogate father, Mordecai, refused to bow down to him. This so enraged Haman that he swore vengeance; he convinced the king to exterminate all the Jews in his kingdom, and he built a large scaffold for Mordecai's hanging. Esther prepared an extravagant feast at which she planned to plead with the king to save her people, and he was so pleased with the banquet, as well as with her beauty, that he offered to grant her half of his kingdom. She declined and instead revealed her identity to Ahasuerus and pleaded for the lives of her people. In response, the king spared the Jews and hanged Haman from his own gallows.

Truth used elements of this story to compare the lack of respect of women in her own time, particularly among its leaders, to the more receptive attitudes of Ahasuerus toward Esther. She implied that men in her own time were more selfish and less respectful, even though women asked for less:

There was a king in old times in the Scripiters that said he'd give away half of his kingdom, and hang some body as Haman. Now, he was more liberaler than the present King of the United States, 'cause he wouldn't do that for the women. … But we don't want him to kill the men, nor we don't want half of his kingdom; we only want half of our rights, and we don't get them neither.¹⁰⁷

Truth's evocation of the narrative of Esther thus allowed her to admonish her audience for their selfishness, compared to the example set in the Bible. However, her use of the story also shifted her persona from confrontation to a rhetoric of supplication in her appeals for woman's rights. As Phyllis Japp has argued, because Esther was controlled by her scene, “the static, traditional world of male dominance,” this situation dictated her actions, such that “men must act first, extending justice and mercy to the enslaved.”¹⁰⁸ Consequently, in relying on Esther's story to ground her argument, Truth adopted a strategy of solicitation, one based in women's use of feminine wiles and pleading poses. She thus acknowledged men's power to grant rights to women, even while she admonished their selfishness in refusing to do so.

Truth's second use of a biblical woman's story to structure an address came in the first of her two speeches to the Equal Rights Association on May 10, 1867. Here Truth used the character of Mary of Magdala to argue that women were more virtuous and consequently more deserving of rights than were men. This narrative again functioned to accomplish several rhetorical tasks for Truth, simultaneously providing a positive portrait of woman and grounds for ridicule of man. Although the case of Mary of Magdala, particularly the account of her seven devils cast out by Jesus,¹⁰⁹ had been used as evidence of woman's lack of morality by woman's rights opponents, Truth cleverly reversed this argument.

Truth used the story of Mary of Magdala first in her construction of a prosopopoeia, a mock debate between herself and a woman's rights opponent, in which she simultaneously refuted and derided men for their antagonism. After describing an incident when a man invoked the example of Mary's seven devils to argue to Truth that woman was not fit to rule, she recounted her reply to him for the audience:

“Seven devils is of no account”—(laughter)—said I, “just behold, the man had a legion.” (Loud laughter.) They never thought about that. A man had a legion—(laughter)—and the devils didn't know where to go. That was the trouble. (Laughter and applause.) They asked if they might get among the swine; they thought it was about as good a place as where they came from. (Laughter). Why didn't the devils ask to go among the sheep? (Laughter.) But no. But that may have been selfish of the devils—(laughter)—and certainly man has a little touch of that selfishness that don't want to give women their right.¹¹⁰

Truth's rebuttal inverted the implication that woman was the corrupted sex and instead demonstrated the lowliness of man, such that not only did he possess even more devils than she, but his character was portrayed as even beneath that of pigs and sheep. As this passage also indicated through the inclusion of the audience reactions, Truth performed this satire with a masterful sense of comic timing, such that each of her statements built on the humor established in the previous sentence.

Truth continued the tale of Mary of Magdala further into the speech, also using the narrative to underscore the loyalty and faith of woman in contrast to the insensitive and impatient character of man. She admonished the audience to compare the biblical accounts of each:

Look at the woman after all, the woman when they [seven devils] were cast out, and see how much she loved Jesus, and how she followed, and stood and waited for him. That was the faithfulness of a woman. You cannot find any faith of man like that, go where you will. … When Mary stood and looked for Jesus, the man looked and didn't stop long enough to find out whether He was there or not; but when the woman stood there (blessed be God, I think I can see her!) she staid until she knew where He was, and said: “I will carry Him away!” Was woman true? She guarded it. The truth will reign triumphant.¹¹¹

For Truth, the story of Mary proved that woman was more deserving of rights than man and that she fundamentally was more patient and pure of heart. Additionally, Truth's telling of the tale established a sense of certainty and inevitability, such that despite their selfishness, men would not impede women forever. Rather, because “the truth will reign,” women ultimately would triumph in their quest without the help of men. The invocation of the story of Mary thus functioned to create a stronger rhetorical stance for Truth than did her earlier use of Esther's tale because it placed woman as the powerful actor in the narrative instead of portraying her as the supplicant.

Across the breadth of her woman's rights speeches, Truth more often invoked the power of woman in relation to man's weakness than the pleading image. Not only did she depict men as animals and devils, but she often mocked them for being confused and powerless in the face of women's demands, as well as speaking nothing but nonsense. In her Akron speech, for example, she noted that “the poor men seem to be all in confusion, and dont know what to do” and that they inevitably were doomed to concede to the righteousness of her arguments because they were caught “between a hawk and a buzzard.”¹¹² Invoking this colloquialism of the time,¹¹³ she implied that men would either suffer now or suffer later, but, regardless, their time of dominance over the slave and the woman was past. Similarly, in her first speech to the Equal Rights Association, she foretold that man's injuries suffered in having to relinquish his power would be painful but would pass: “I know that is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.”¹¹⁴ Additionally, she ridiculed males' self-importance: “I know men will get up and brat, brat, brat, brat (laughter) about something which does not amount to anything except talk,” and she claimed, “Men speak great lies.”¹¹⁵

Truth also offered criticism of woman's behavior at times, particularly her tendencies toward timidity and vanity. For example, in her second speech to the Equal Rights Association, she entreated women to be bold and assertive: “Be strong women! blush not! tremble not!”¹¹⁶ Truth often implied that if women wanted their rights, they should just take them, rather than beg men for them. Additionally, in one very forthright statement, she criticized women for their vanity in dress and fashion: “When I saw them women on the stage at the Woman's Suffrage convention, the other day, I thought, What kind of reformers be you, with goose-wings on your heads, as if you were going to fly, and dressed in such ridiculous fashion, talking about reform and women's rights?”¹¹⁷ Although Truth had much earlier chosen for herself a style of dress that suggested the simplicity of a Quaker, she had not spoken out often against the elaborateness of women's fashions until the 1870s.¹¹⁸ Her comments about dress issued a challenge to women to reflect upon the contradictions between their behavior and their demands for rights. Until women were more reflexive in recognizing the flaws in their own vanity, she scolded, they certainly would contribute to their own ridicule in the eyes of others.

Despite her occasional criticism of women, Truth's mostly positive portrait of woman's character overall, drawn in contrast to her depiction of man's negative traits, conveyed an argument of inevitability for the cause of woman's rights. She suggested that one who makes “a booby of himself”¹¹⁹ as man did could not hope to be dominant over women for long. Consequently, she argued, man had no choice but to see woman gain her rights: “There is a power they cannot gainsay or resist. It will come.”¹²⁰ Moreover, her presence at these meetings confronted white women's definition of the issue as well. Truth insisted that she, too, had rights as a woman, a citizen, and a human being. Above all, in these speeches she also offered a salve to both sexes for their sufferings through her insistence that inevitably a time would come when woman and man would cease their struggles: “When woman gets her rights man will be right. How beautiful that will be. Then it will be peace on earth and good will to men. But it cannot be that until it be right.”¹²¹

NARRATIVE FIDELITY AND PROBABILITY: SOJOURNER TRUTH AS PROPHET

In all three of her narratives, the story of her life and religion, the description of race differences, and her depiction of woman's character, Truth created a set of simple oppositions to convey her values and beliefs to her audiences. Her stories were built upon three basic contrasts: the goodness and devout character of the slave and the evil of the slaveholder, the love and resolve in the black race and the hatred and apathy of the whites, and the physical and moral strength of woman in the face of man's selfishness and ineptitude. Truth's tales drew their rhetorical power from the degree of narrative fidelity and narrative probability they contained.

A judgment of narrative fidelity entails an examination of the truthfulness of a story and its resonance with an audience's values. In other words, the fidelity of a story depends on the quality of the “good reasons” offered by a rhetor in support of his or her narrative. Two aspects of Truth's narratives in particular provided this sense of accuracy and validity. First, because her narratives fundamentally were grounded in her own life experience, she was able to give personal testimony about slavery, discrimination, and sexism that was difficult to argue against. Truth's reliance on her own life provided a powerful sense of proof, as she reminded audiences often that she knew much about that which she spoke. Thus, she could with authority insist that slavery was something that had to be felt, that true religious commitment meant a life of good works such as hers, and that woman's moral superiority ensured that she would triumph over obstacles, as her own life had proven. Because she embodied the principles she advocated, the truthfulness of her appeals was unmistakable.

Second, the fidelity of Truth's narratives resided in her use of authoritative sources and familiar rhetorical forms. Not only did her own experience support her arguments, but so did her invocation of the Bible and her definition of true Christian behavior. Truth was adept at citing biblical allusions in her speeches, particularly to answer her opponents on the question of woman's rights. Additionally, in her own narrative of religious conversion, reliance on the black jeremiad, and performance of religious songs, Truth used the doctrine of faith in God's justice to her advantage. She constructed her narratives upon the solid rock of religion, a strategy that, especially coupled with her actual enactment of these principles, ensured an authoritative force for her rhetoric.

Evaluation of the probability of a narrative requires consideration of the coherence of the story, especially in terms of the consistency of characters. Truth herself was the central character across all three narratives, and her persona in each case was constructed upon similar features. As discussed previously, part of her appeal resided in her evocation of the “horse sense” character to set herself apart from her audiences as one who is superior to them because she has common sense and can see through their empty rhetoric and posturing. Additionally, Truth's character was marked by the religious and moral superiority she often conveyed, such that she knew the truth about the sins of slaveholders and whites and could see the contradictions in the arguments made against women, particularly those grounded in biblical stories. She also did not downplay her race or her strong appearance before white audiences but glorified in her color and her physical strength. Before black audiences, she encouraged similar conviction and pride.

Most important, across all of her narratives Truth established a prophetic persona for herself. Combining the force of her authority based in experience and the moral superiority of her religious conviction, she referred to herself as having the ability to see, to watch, and to predict. For example, in her 1853 speech to the “mob convention” she said, “I'll be around agin sometime. I'm watching things, and I'll git up agin, an' tell you what time o'night it is.”¹²² In other speeches, she implied that she could see the future, as in her second speech to the Equal Rights Association, where she said of woman's rights, “Yes, it will come quickly. (Applause.) It must come,”¹²³ or another delivered in 1871 where she said that “the spirit of prophesy” had told her that her people were destined to be a great nation out west.¹²⁴ Two factors in Truth's self-references contributed significantly to her image as a wise sage: her insistence that she was called to her causes by God and her reliance on the myth of her great age.

Many of her speeches contain references to her belief that she personally was called to do God's work and was to remain in the world until her work was done. In her first speech to the 1867 Equal Rights Association, for example, she said: “I am above 80 years old; it is about time for me to be going. But I suppose I am kept here because something remains for me to do; I suppose I am yet to help break the chain.”¹²⁵ In another speech late in her life she noted that “I believe that God had spared me to do good.”¹²⁶ On other occasions she played on the myth of her longevity, jokingly threatening audiences to do what she asked, or they would continue to have to listen to her, such as in her third speech to the Equal Rights Association: “Now, if you want to get me out of the world, you had better get the women votin' soon. (Laughter.) I shan't go till I can do that.”¹²⁷ In other speeches she subtly referenced a widely held belief that she was over 100 years old, as when she said, “I talk to a great many people, but none older than myself.”¹²⁸

Such references to her abilities as a wise old seer, of course, were only magnified when Stowe published her famous article in 1863 and thereby cemented the image of Truth as a prophetess, “the Libyan Sibyl,” in the public mind. Many other contemporaries of Truth also characterized her as a sibyl or sage, such as her friend Eliza Leggett, who recalled how Truth “with her exhortating sent out her Prophecy,”¹²⁹ and Lucinda Hinsdale Stone, who noted how “many times, when least expected, expressions would drop from her that truly classed her with the prophets and apostles of old.”¹³⁰ Upon her death, the Detroit Post and Tribune eulogized Truth by comparing her to women of the Bible: “We think of ‘one Anna, a prophetess’ who ‘was of a great age,’ and of Miriam, the prophetess who took a timbrel in her hand and sang a song of victory by the Red sea.”¹³¹ In her own rhetorical narratives and in images created through reports about her, Truth's persona reflected a powerful sense of a woman whose faith, life, and age placed her a step closer to heaven than others less blessed.

Thus, the power of Truth's rhetoric came from her successful construction of an autobiographical character that coincided precisely with what audiences actually saw when she spoke before them. In her unadorned dress and turban, with her strong voice and haunting singing, Truth challenged audiences to consider the worth of herself and her experience. She asked them to broaden their perspectives, to mend their ways, and to be God's servants in order to ensure justice and equality. She was not afraid to speak forthrightly and to answer a heckler with a stern admonition or to profess her faith and values through the performance of a song. In all, her narratives and her personal character blended seamlessly, such that Truth herself understood the correspondence and its persuasive force: “I will shake every place I go to.”¹³²

Notes

1. National Anti-Slavery Standard 11 July 1863: 4.

2. Frances D. Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 2 May 1863: 4.

3. For an excellent summary of the historical development of narrative, see Part I, “The Historical Exigence” in Walter R. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action (Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1989) 5-54.

4. Walter Fisher, “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument,” Communication Monographs 51 (1984): 1-22.

5. Fisher, Human Communication 58.

6. Fisher, Human Communication 105.

7. Fisher, Human Communication 107.

8. Fisher, Human Communication 108.

9. Fisher, Human Communication 47.

10. Fisher, Human Communication 47.

11. Fisher, Human Communication 47.

12. A. Cheree Carlson, “Character Invention in the Letters of Maimie Pinzer,” Communication Quarterly 43 (1995): 418.

13. A. Cheree Carlson, “The Role of Character in Public Moral Argument: Henry Ward Beecher and the Brooklyn Scandal,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 77 (1991): 44.

14. William G. Kirkwood, “Storytelling and Self-Confrontation: Parables as Communication Strategies,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (1983): 58-74.

15. Kirkwood, “Storytelling” 68.

16. Kirkwood, “Storytelling” 69.

17. Kirkwood, “Storytelling” 70-73.

18. Kirkwood, “Storytelling” 71.

19. William G. Kirkwood, “Parables as Metaphors and Examples,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 71 (1985): 431.

20. “New York City Anti-Slavery Meeting,” New York Tribune 5 Sept. 1853: 5.

21. “Proceedings at the Anti-Slavery Celebration,” Liberator [Boston] 14 July 1854: 2; “Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Friends of Human Progress in Michigan,” Anti-Slavery Bugle [Salem, OH] 4 Nov. 1856: 4.

22. Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Sojourner Truth, The Libyan Sibyl,” Atlantic Monthly Apr. 1863: 473-81.

23. “Commemoration of the Eighth Anniversary of Negro Freedom in the United States,” Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondswoman of Olden Times (Battle Creek, MI, 1881) 213-16.

24. “New York City Anti-Slavery Meeting” 5.

25. “Address by a Slave Mother,” New York Tribune 7 Sept. 1853: 5.

26. “Proceedings of the Annual Meeting” 4.

27. “Proceedings of the Annual Meeting” 4.

28. “Address by a Slave Mother” 5.

29. “Proceedings of the Annual Meeting” 4.

30. “Lecture of a Colored Woman,” New York Tribune 16 Sept. 1853: 7.

31. Carleton Mabee, and Susan Mabee Newhouse, Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend (New York: New York University Press, 1993) 226-27.

32. Narrative 302-04. Another version is slightly different, altering the phrase “I Am Pleading for My People” into “She Pleadeth for her People.” See “She Pleadeth,” n. pag., n.d., HSBC.

33. “Sojourner Truth,” Daily Inter Ocean [Chicago] 13 Aug. 1879: 3.

34. Mabee and Newhouse 227.

35. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon, 1974) 249.

36. See Kerran L. Sanger, “Slave Resistance and Rhetorical Self-Definition: Spirituals as Strategy,” Western Journal of Communication 59 (1995): 177-92; Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford UP, 1977) 3-55.

37. “Proceedings at the Anti-Slavery Celebration,” Liberator [Boston] 7 July 1854: 4.

38. “State Sabbath School Convention,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 11 July 1863: 4.

39. “Sojourner Truth,” Woman's Journal 5 Aug. 1876: 252.

40. “Commemoration of the Eighth Anniversary” 213-14.

41. “Lecture by Sojourner Truth,” New York Tribune 8 Nov. 1853: 6.

42. “Lecture of a Colored Woman” 7.

43. “Address by a Slave Mother” 5.

44. “Commemoration of the Eighth Anniversary” 214.

45. “New York City Anti-Slavery Meeting” 5.

46. “Address by a Slave Mother” 5.

47. “Lecture of Colored Woman” 7.

48. “New York City Anti-Slavery Meeting” 5.

49. “Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl” 475-76. For other examples of the dramatic retelling of Truth's conversion story, see especially the Narrative 66-70; Lillie B. Chace Wyman, “Sojourner Truth,” New England Magazine Mar. 1901: 60-61; Harriet Carter, “Sojourner Truth,” The Chatauquan 7 (May 1887): 478.

50. “The Children of Slavery,” Detroit Post and Tribune 29 Nov. 1883: 4.

51. Levine 21.

52. “Address by a Slave Mother” 5. In addition, the extant report of Truth's address in a church in New York City in 1853 refers to her having spoken to a “respectable audience of coloured people”; however, in this speech, she did not address her slave experiences so much as she develops a contrast between whites and her race. Hence, this second speech to a colored audience is analyzed in the subsequent section of this chapter. See “Lecture by Sojourner Truth,” New York Tribune 7 Nov. 1853: 6.

53. “Address by a Slave Mother” 5.

54. “Address by a Slave Mother” 5.

55. “Address by a Slave Mother” 5.

56. Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1982) 31.

57. “Proceedings at the Anti-Slavery Celebration” 4.

58. “Sojourner Truth and her Talks,” n. pag., n.d., WL.

59. Parker Pillsbury, as quoted in Wyman, “Sojourner Truth” 64.

60. Pillsbury, quoted. in Wyman 64. Another account of this same incident can be found in James A. Dugdale's report. See “Sojourner Truth,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 4 July 1863: 3.

61. “Address by a Slave Mother” 5.

62. Moses 49.

63. “Proceedings at the Anti-Slavery Celebration” 4.

64. Moses 5.

65. “Anti-Slavery Convention,” Liberator [Boston] 4 Apr. 1851: 1.

66. Narrative 215.

67. “State Sabbath School Convention” 4.

68. “Sojourner Truth's Lecture,” Narrative 242.

69. “Lecture,” Narrative 226.

70. “Lecture,” Narrative 226.

71. “George Truman and Sojourner Truth in Orange,” Narrative 249-50.

72. “Sojourner's Favorite Song,” n. pag., n.d., HSBC.

73. “Sojourner's Favorite Song,” n. pag.

74. Sanger 185-88.

75. Mabee and Newhouse 227, 229.

76. Narrative 126.

77. “Lecture by Sojourner Truth,” New York Tribune 7 Nov. 1853: 6.

78. “Lecture by Sojourner Truth” 6.

79. Moses 32.

80. “Lecture by Sojourner Truth” 6.

81. “Lecture by Sojourner Truth” 6.

82. “Lecture by Sojourner Truth” 6.

83. “Lecture by Sojourner Truth” 6.

84. See, for example, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, vol. 2 (New York: Praeger, 1989), and “Style and Content in the Rhetoric of Early Afro-American Feminists,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 72 (1986): 434-45; bell hooks, Aint I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981); Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Morrow, 1984); Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge: Belknap, 1959).

85. Frances D. Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, ed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1882) 116; Frances D. Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 2 May 1863: 4.

86. “Women's Rights Convention,” Anti-Slavery Bugle [Salem, OH] 21 June 1851: 4; “Woman's Rights Convention,” New York Tribune 6 June 1851: 7; “Woman's Rights Convention,” Liberator [Boston] 13 June 1851: 4.

87. Mabee and Newhouse 67-82.

88. Gage, “Sojourner Truth” 4.

89. Mabee and Newhouse 68-69.

90. “Women's Rights Convention,” Anti-Slavery Bugle [Salem, OH] 21 June 1851: 4.

91. “First Annual Meeting of the Equal Rights Association,” New York Times 10 May 1867: 8; “First Annual Meeting of the Equal Rights Association,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 1 June 1867: 3; “First Annual Meeting of the Equal Rights Association,” History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2: 222.

92. “First Annual Meeting,” History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2: 193-94.

93. “First Annual Meeting,” History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2: 193-94.

94. “First Annual Meeting,” History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2: 224-25.

95. “Women's Rights Convention,” Anti-Slavery Bugle [Salem, OH] 21 June 1851: 4.

96. “First Annual Meeting,” History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2: 193-94.

97. “Women's Rights Convention,” Anti-Slavery Bugle [Salem, OH] 21 June 1851: 4.

98. “Women's Rights Convention,” Anti-Slavery Bugle [Salem, OH] 21 June 1851: 4.

99. “Women's Rights Convention,” Anti-Slavery Bugle [Salem, OH] 21 June 1851: 4.

100. “Women's Rights Convention,” Anti-Slavery Bugle [Salem, OH] 21 June 1851: 4.

101. “First Annual Meeting,” History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1: 567-68; “First Annual Meeting,” New York Daily Times 8 Sept. 1853: 1; “First Annual Meeting,” New York Tribune 8 Sept. 1853: 5; “The Rows of Yesterday,” New York Daily Times 8 Sept. 1853: 4.

102. “First Annual Meeting,” History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1: 567-68.

103. “Woman's Rights Convention,” New York Daily Times 8 Sept. 1853: 1.

104. “Woman's Rights Convention,” New York Daily Times 8 Sept. 1853: 1.

105. “Woman's Rights Convention,” New York Daily Times 8 Sept. 1853: 1.

106. Esth.: 1-10.

107. “Woman's Rights Convention,” New York Daily Times 8 Sept. 1853: 1.

108. Phyllis Japp, “Esther or Isaiah?: The Abolitionist-Feminist Rhetoric of Angelina Grimké,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 71 (1985): 345.

109. Mark 16: 9.

110. “First Annual Meeting,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 1 June 1867: 3.

111. “First Annual Meeting,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 1 June 1867: 3.

112. “Women's Rights Convention,” Anti-Slavery Bugle [Salem, OH] 21 June 1851: 4.

113. See Lawrence Urdang and Nancy LaRoche, eds., Picturesque Expressions: A Thematic Dictionary (Detroit: Gale Research, 1980) 262.

114. “First Annual Meeting,” New York Tribune 10 May 1867: 8.

115. “First Annual Meeting,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 1 June 1867: 3.

116. “First Annual Meeting,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 1 June 1867: 3.

117. “Sojourner Truth: The Fashions,” Narrative 243.

118. Mabee and Newhouse 190-91.

119. “American Woman Suffrage Association,” New York Tribune 12 May 1870: 2.

120. “First Annual Meeting,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 1 June 1867: 3.

121. “First Annual Meeting,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 1 June 1867: 3.

122. “Woman's Rights Convention,” New York Daily Times 8 Sept. 1835: 1.

123. “First Annual Meeting,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 1 June 1867: 3.

124. “Sojourner Truth and her Talks” n. pag.

125. “First Annual Meeting,” New York Tribune 10 May 1867: 8.

126. “Sojourner Truth: Extracts From her Lecture on Capital Punishment,” Nightly Moon [Battle Creek, MI] 8 June 1881: 1.

127. “First Annual Meeting,” History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2: 225.

128. “Sojourner Truth: Extracts” n. pag.

129. Eliza Leggett, “Sojourner Truth,” Leggett Family Papers, n. pag., n.d., DPL.

130. Belle McArthur Perry, Lucinda Hinsdale Stone: Her Life Story and Reminiscences (Detroit: Blinn Publishing Company, 1902) 323.

131. “The Children of Slavery,” 4

132. “First Annual Meeting,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 1 June 1867: 3.