Albumen CDV portrait of Sojourner Truth. Michigan, 1864. Mount recto printed: "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance. / Sojourner Truth." Copyright statement on verso. 

Born into enslavement in 1797, Truth was able to attain emancipation in 1827 by running away and seeking aid from the abolitionist Van Wagener family. Moving to New York City in 1828, she worked for a minister and became involved in religious revivals by the 1830s. After meeting William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, she used her considerable talents as a charismatic orator to speak on the evils of slavery, while also championing women's rights and the temperance movement.

She never learned to read or write, dictating her correspondence and autobiography, published in 1850. Truth brilliantly utilized the 19th-century photographic metaphor of the "shadow" (copies of this CDV) to fund the "substance" (her abolitionist speaking tours). By securing the federal copyright in her own name through the Eastern District of Michigan in 1864, Truth asserted direct legal and financial control over her intellectual property and image at a time when Black women were routinely disenfranchised.

[Carte de Visite, CDV, Sojourner Truth, Isabella Baumfree, I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance, African Americana, Abolitionist, Women's Rights, Suffrage, Eastern District of Michigan, 1864, Civil War Era, Battle Creek Michigan, Civil Rights Icon, 19th Century Photography]

Good condition. The print remains nearly flawless, with excellent tone and clarity. The mount is trimmed across its top edge, with an additional small area of loss along the bottom edge.