Sojourner Truth has generated a tremendous literature; she has attracted the attention of numerous biographers as well as historians of the Civil War, Reconstruction, abolition and the suffragette movement. Surprisingly, her photographs have only been the subject of one art historical article (Collins). Sojourner Truth’s cartes-de-visite are meditations by a former slave on value and authorship.

The summer apprentice, Sonia Fleury, assisted on a book-length project, researching primary sources concerning photography, the Civil War, and economic debates as well as Sojourner Truth’s life and activism among abolitionists and suffragettes; reading newspapers of the key years, for instance the New York World; and locating and ordering all extant photographs of Sojourner Truth. Fleury also researched the Sojourner Truth papers in Michigan (Detroit, Ann Arbor, Battle Creek) and Washington D.C.