Sojourner Truth

A first-person history of nonviolent resistance in the U.S., from pre-Revolutionary America to the Trump years. While historical accounts of the United States typically focus on the nation's military past, a rich and vibrant counter narrative remains basically unknown to most Americans. This alternate history of the formation of our nation—and its character—is one in which courageous individuals and movements have wielded the tools of nonviolence to resist unjust, unfair, and immoral policies and practices. We the Resistance gives curious citizens and current resisters unfiltered access to the hearts and minds of their activist predecessors. Beginning with the pre-Revolutionary War era and continuing through to the present day, readers will encounter the voices of protestors sharing instructive stories about their methods (from sit-ins to tree sitting) and opponents (from Puritans to Wall Street bankers), as well as inspirational stories about their failures (from slave petitions to the fight for the ERA), and successes (from enfranchisement for women to today's reform of police practices). Instruction and inspiration run throughout this captivating reader, generously illustrated with historic graphics and photographs of nonviolent protests throughout U.S. history.

"A symbol of the strength of African-American women, and a champion of the rights of all women, Sojourner Truth was an illiterate former slave named Isabella who became a vastly powerful orator. Dictated to a neighbor and first published in 1850, Truth's celebrated story chronicles her life as a slave in New York State, her 1827 emancipation under state law, her religious experiences and her transformation into an extraordinary abolitionist, feminist, and impassioned speaker. Truth's magnetism brought her fame in her own time, and her narrative gives us a vivid picture of nineteenth-century life in the North, where blacks, enslaved or free, lived in relative isolation from one another." "Based on the most complete text, the 1884 edition of the Narrative, this volume contains the "Book of Life" - a collection of letters and biographical sketches about Truth, including the controversial transcription of her "Ar'n't I a Woman" speech and Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1863 essay "Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl" - as well as "A Memorial Chapter" about her death. In her Introduction, historian and Truth biographer Nell Irvin Painter looks at the woman behind the myth."--BOOK JACKET.

The subject of this biography, SOJOURNER TRUTH, as she now calls herself - but whose name, originally, was Isabella - was born, as near as she can now calculate, between the years 1797 and 1800. She was the daughter of James and Betsey, slaves of one Colonel Ardinburgh, Hurley, Ulster County, New York.