Sojourner Truth's America (Working Class in American History)
At a time in nineteenth-century America when the Progressive movement birthed exceptional speakers expounding on the meaning of national and spiritual ideals, Sojourner Truth was among the most popular on the lyceum circuit. A poor, uneducated, dark-skinned woman and a former slave, Truth was on the lowest rung of the social hierarchy, yet she was at the locus of the Progressive movement. Historian Washington examines Truth from that perspective. By dint of her magnetic personality and powerful speech, Truth managed to make herself the “quintessential representative of antebellum progressive America,” an abolitionist, suffragist, spiritualist, and advocate of temperance and health reform. The book is divided into three parts: life in the Hudson Valley under the influence of Dutch and African cultures before Truth was born; her life as a slave, powerful spiritualism, and the convictions that led her to free herself; and her role in the broader Progressive movement. Washington details frictions within the movement and how Truth navigated the internal politics as well as the broader national politics that resisted equality for women and blacks. --Vanessa Bush