ebooks Enduring Truths: Sojourner's Shadows and Substance by Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby in History

Description

Runaway slave Sojourner Truth gained fame in the nineteenth century as an abolitionist; feminist; and orator and earned a living partly by selling photographic carte de visite portraits of herself at lectures and by mail. Cartes de visite; similar in format to calling cards; were relatively inexpensive collectibles that quickly became a new mode of mass communication. Despite being illiterate; Truth copyrighted her photographs in her name and added the caption “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance. Sojourner Truth.” Featuring the largest collection of Truth’s photographs ever published; Enduring Truths is the first book to explore how she used her image; the press; the postal service; and copyright laws to support her activism and herself. Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby establishes a range of important contexts for Truth’s portraits; including the strategic role of photography and copyright for an illiterate former slave; the shared politics of Truth’s cartes de visite and federal banknotes; which were both created to fund the Union cause; and the ways that photochemical limitations complicated the portrayal of different skin tones. Insightful and powerful; Enduring Truths shows how Truth made her photographic portrait worth money in order to end slavery—and also became the strategic author of her public self.