Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) was a remarkable woman born into slavery in the late 1790s to James and Elizabeth, the slaves of a Revolutionary War colonel. Truth was alive at a “time when most Americans thought of blacks as male and women as white, Truth embodied a fact that […] among the blacks are women; among the women there are blacks”(4). With this always in the back of her mind, Truth had to figure out how to maneuver a country where Black women were at the bottom of the social totem pole, to the extent where their presence was not acknowledged. Once Truth received her freedom in 1826, she was forced to find a way to maneuver a society that did not acknowledge her ladyhood because she was Black and because she was born a slave.
Ultimately, Truth reclaimed the term “lady” to fit her ideals and for her to fit the word’s ideals, through her self-portraits. Truth had rights to several photographs that she took throughout her lifetime, that served to provide
her with a side income and a sense of dignity. Truth was well aware of the portraits that former slaves took in which they were “posed in setting or costumes reminiscent of [their] enslavement” however Truth did not utilize this feature in her portraits (186). She purposefully excluded slave memorabilia and her mutilated body parts, from enslavement, out of her portraits in order to portray her “ladyhood”.
Truth donned Quaker style clothing of the highest quality instead of rags depicting a stereotypical ex-slave, held yarn and needle depicting a ladylike figure instead of holding an agricultural tool reminiscent of backbreaking slave labor, and was pictured in a room with decor such as flowers and books instead of a set characterized by a dingy cottage that would have been common for slaves. Truth’s decision to not take these stereotypical photos for the “Union as anti-Confederate propaganda”, but to take portraits that display her “feminine gentility” shows that her photos were “far more individual than propagandistic” (186-187).
The control that Truth took over her portraiture conveys that she was aware of her position in society to change the depiction of Black women. Her images display to the rest of America that when they think of ladies, it should not just be white ladies, but Black women as well. Essentially, her portraits take the term “lady” and include Black women in that definition.