civil rights activist, cleveland sellers, recounts the 1968 orangeburg massacre, where troopers fired on students protesting segregation. and on american artifacts we visit the library of the army. and then they discuss the challenge of telling america's story. exploring the american story. watch american history tv this weekend on c-span 3. university of washington history professor, discusses the life and legacy of sojourner truth, a slave, who became a speaker on abolition and rights. it's from their great lives lecture series.

born in san antonio, the alma mater of texas state university. she taught in beaumont for three years, before entering the doctoral program at rice university where she focussed on american legal and constitutional history and african-american history. her dissertation was on the unsuccessful attempt to stop lynching. and then coming to fredericksburg and the then mary washington college. she teaches legal, constitutional and african-american history, as well as a wide array of courses, including the gilded age, progressive era, united states and vietnam. essex 1945.

america's small wars, the american home front during the world wars and american disasters. in addition to the history department's two course for majors. and she is currently chair of the department of history and american studies. it's my pleasure to introduced dr. claudeen feral. first, i want to thank jay crowley for doing a great job for years and years and for his brief moment working in gw because i replaced him and that's how i was hired here at mary washington. but there is no replacing bill crawly. also want to add my seconds to thank, as power for sponsoring the lecture. i'm talking about sojourner

truth today and she was clearly an unusual, i would say, unique woman and certainly beyond anybody's measure, an impressive one. but to what degree was she these things is really impossible to know for a variety of reasons i'm going to be emphasizing today. like most former slaves, even fredric douglas, who wrote extensively and spoke extensively, there are details about her life that we don't know. that i think, in many ways, she did not know. and certainly there were details that she refused to share and i will be discussing those as well. she comes to us, largely through the lens of whites. of white america. through friends and faux, through supporters and opponents. through people who were curious and judgmental, to people who actually knew her and people who just met her in passing.

and for whatever reason, she insured that that was the case. she clearly spoke her mind. we know that. we have enough to indicate that. and she did nat over about at least half of her 86 years. she walked over much of this country, did verbal battles with some of the most important and skilled debaters of the time. so, we know a lot about her but it's still pretty much comes from white audiences. white photographers, newspaper reporters, allies, oponents and in a way that represents the racial thinking of the time period, because this was a time period of racism and sexism and classism. but it also comes from us and how we interpret what we hear,

what we read about sojourner truth. and in this day and age, we want a strong woman. we want a strong black woman. and she certainly, in many ways, can fit that bill. we need to remember that, while many states, by the mid1800s had abolished slavery, and then, after 1865, of course w the 13th amendment, the entire country was free of slavery. racism, racial thinking was alive and well and supported by science, religion, history, society. the woman we know as sojourner truth lived and preached in this time. and that limited what she, as a woman, as a black, as a former slave could do and how she was perceived. that effected how she thought

and spoke and lived and how her story has become known to us. >> so, who was sojourner truth? >> he is freedom to some, who visit the many monuments to her throughout the u.s. she is also liberty and equal rights for african-americans. for women. she is assertiveness and pride. she is, without doubt, an impressive woman debater, speaker, story teller. she's an inspiration. she combined hard works, opportunities to speak, many she created herself. her story. with some gaps in there and some additions. god's message and even her

striking physical appearance and voice. enough to have a congresswoman's cat named after her. and mars rover bore hes chosen name. innumerable children's books and paper dolls. a biography by one of the nation's most respected historians. doodle, a day in her honor in the state she adopted, statues, museums, memorials, dedicated to her words, to her actions. enough to indicate the importance of what she accomplished in her 86 years or, i might add, her 103 or 105 years because she gave different times and everybody assumed she was older than she was. she did not look, sound, or behachbl the way women or slaves or free blacks were supposed to and it was more than about her causes, which were abolitionism

and equal rights after that. and women's rights. to 1800s white americans, she was unfeminine, exotic, and not a positive way, deviant. she was disgusting, a curiosity. grotesque. these are all terms used to describe her in the 1850s and 1860s. she violated norms for blacks and for women, although, until she walked away, her term, from slavery in 1826, probably not so much that she violate the norms of a slave. she was assertive, angry, whity. she grabbed and controlled attention. she performed. she should be up here right now. she asserted her freedom and her views, all of which she shared with god. she spoke to white audiences, to women and men.

she initiated lawsuits to free her son, to sue a white couple, who slandered her, to charge a conductor with assault and battery. she had much to prove. she won lawsuits. she was arrested more than once. she attempted to vote. she petitioned congress, or tried to. she met presidents, three in fact. she wrote, dictated, her biography. she supported herself through physical labor and through her photographs. she reinvented herself. and through all of this she was illiterate. the story of sojourner truth actually begins a couple of centuries before her. begins in colonial new netherlands. and what you have on the screen there are a couple of images that show you where the dutch

settled in the 1620s and what new amsterdam, their headquarters in modern day manhattan. we then just a couple of years, slaved started arriving from africa. they cleared land, split logs, milled lumber, they built wharves. you can see the need for them. droves and fortifications. in some cases, they were allowed to be half free, kind of on their own most of the year but working for the colony when needed. so, they were certainly seen as integral to the colony but also seen as unequal and they were exploited. the english came about 40/50 years later and that's the beginning of new york and that's where sojourner truth grew up and spent a good part of her life. not mississippi, not alabama,

not virginia. not the typical southern slave states. with the english came more restrictions. came limitations on blacks being free, came some negatives, came fear of black uprisings. came the slave market. in new york was a major slave market. at the time. what did the slaves do there? many around new york and the counties nearby, they did farming. not on the scale that you see in the south. they were house servants. manufacturing workers. they had skilled jobs. they were goldsmiths, silver smiths, shoe makers. flag smiths. they did a little bit of everything that required skill and some that didn't require skill.

they also served on ships and one of sojourner truth's sons would sail away on a vessel. over 11% of new york was black, african. that number would go up and go down a bit. and particularly would it be effected by the american revolution. and as the images here demonstrate, africans, african-americans, they were developing the use of that label, fought on both sides. they influenced a lot of thinking that was already starting to change by that time. they were raising issues themselves and their white supporters of how could the americans complain about british enslavement of the colonies, when the colonials themselves were enslaving people. so, you have natural rights philosophy starting to grow more and more.

you also have the changes that came with the freedom granted african-american slaves, who fought for either side. and you have economic changes that were coming at this time of the country's history. and not just in virginia. that is going to switch more and more from tobacco to wheat and other grains. but throughout the country where white labors started to assume more of the jobs now that there were fewer slaves in those areas. the result was that increasingly in new york, where once before, one -- there was one slave per seven white new yorkers, now there was one per 12 white new yorkers. and new yorkers started to think more and more, as did other colonies, now states, that slavery had to end. the complication is you end slavery but still have a large

inferior population that you don't particularly respect or want or believe deserve the same rights and opportunities that you do. as you can see from this map, new york is titled with having abolished or ended slavery in 1799. that, in fact, is two years after sojourner truth was born. and that is going to have an effect on her and her family. because what we see here in new york is that they had a substanshm number of slaves as late as 1790. and if you lookality this and see the highlighted area from new york, new york's slave population was fairly substantial until the time that abolition actually, truly existed in new york. because new york passed an abolition law that said if a child was born to a woman, who was enslaved, after july 4th

1799, that child would be free. if it was a male child t would be free. in 28 years. if it was a female child, she would be free in 25 years. the mother and the siblings born before that date, they were still slaves. so, that was new york's first attempt. and sojourner truth was born before that date. and her children will be born of that date. so, in theory, there are a lot of slaves in new york, including sojourner truth and her family. i will explain her name wasn't sojourner truth at this time. she was born in ulster county, new york. on the farm of colonel hardenburg and she had five owners in her lifetime.

she spent the longest time with john dumont, her last owner. and when she left, she was 28, 29. so, you could see that most of her time, as a young teenager and adult was with john dumont and his wife, sally. isabella bonfry or bell bonfry, grew up in this part of new york and this was a dutch part of new york. so, if you ever hear somebody delivering one of sojourner truth's talks and had a heavy alabama, mississippi

difficulties in trying to imagine her speaking. if you imagine her as a southern slave. she was a northern woman. she was a new yorker. and that effected a lot of her travels and a lot of her thinking. she was one of perhaps 12 children, perhaps the youngest, perhaps the next youngest. she grew very tall and we'll get to that in a little bit. and she was seen as an extremely hard working, indispensable, trustworthy young woman. and apparently, she saw her lot in life as a slave as one she took seriously. that the white adults, the one whose owned and controlled and beat and abused her, that they were god. they were her small world, her existence. she might have gotten in trouble now and then. she liked, apparently too,

drink, if she could get liquor, and to smoke, which she continued to do most of her life. but she was a hard worker who took her responsibilities very seriously. and that's something historians have tried to figure out how that effected her and the rest of her life. at what point did she develop the confidence, the reinvention of this capable, strong, self-confident woman? because it did not exist, from all the stories she tells in her narrative, which she published in 1950, when she was about 53 years old, about who she was growing up. we know from her narrative that john dumont beat her. apparently he cared deeply about her but he beat her. there's no evidence he sexually abused her or anything like that. the evidence of that is apparently in relation to his wife. in her narrative, sojourner

truth refers to things that she cannot name, things that were unnatural and abhorrent, that happened with sally dumont and she did not talk about that. scholars have speculated fairly seriously that she was sexually abused by mrs. dumont. and there was a fairly deep anger and hatred of her, although, when sally dumont was dying, here comes sojourner truth to take care of her. that was part of her responsibility. during her time with john dumont and his wife, she did a lot of tasks and he often praised her for being stronger, more capable, more hard working than any of the men he ever had working on the farm, both slave and free. she had some calling from god and it was in this early time that she set up a kind of

meditation place. there was a little island in the middle of the stream, surrounded by willows and she would go there to talk to god. she would go there to communicate. she would go there, in some ways, i suspect, simply to get through her existence. well, what happened is when she was probably about 15/16 years old, she had a romantic relationship with a young slave from another farm. the owner of that slave, the owner of the other farm broke it off and apparently almost beat the young man to death to keep him away. so, isabella, isabel, then married, which new york law allowed, a young man on her own, a young slave on her own plantation -- her own farm. and bore five children. historians believe they were all her husband's, thomas.

they believe but they're not 100% sure because of the timing and because there's a missing child. we know things that happened with her son, peter. she goes to court to protect him and takes him to new york city with her later. we know about her three daughters, dianna, elizabeth and sophia because they wind up spending many years with her later in life. we don't know about the fifth child. was this a boy who died. was this a daughter she introduces later? because there's evidence she introduced another young woman as her daughter. we don't know. and we don't know, for sure, who the father is, particularly of the first two children. was the young man, who was beaten and sent away? was it thomas? potentially was it john dumont, who i don't think anybody

seriously, seriously thinks that. what makes the story interesting is the control that isabel took. her agreement with john dumaunlt is that, because of her hard work, she would be free in 1826, ahead of a new new york law. in 1817, new york passed another law and said in 1827 we're done with slavery. that's it. you're free. you don't have to wait that extra time. and that meant sojourner isabel would be free. her deal with john dumont is she would be free earlier. he renagged on the deal. he said because she injured her right hand earlier and hadn't been able to do as much work that she couldn't get off. she hadn't done the work necessary to earn that. her solution, as she put it, was to walk away. so, she took her youngest daughter, sophia, newly born and

left. and her explanation for that is fairly straight forward. the slave holders are terrible for promising to give you this or that, if you do this and so. w when the time of fulfillment comes and one claims the promise, they recollect nothing of the kind and you are, like as not, taunted with being a liar or, at best, the slave is accused of not having performed his part or condition of the contract. interestingly enough, when isabel left with sophia, she wound up at the home of a white cup, whose name she takes for a while and they wound up paying john dumont for the lilittle bit of time to safeguard and secure her freedom and avoid problems with that. what you have is this young woman changing her name, as she

redefines, still in a halting way, her identity, from isabella bonfry, to isabella van wagonen. and finally, in 1843, fairly down the line, she changes her name to the name we all know about her. and so, the question is raised about what happened in those years. because we pretty much know what happens after 1850. in 1850 she starts her public life. her walking, her preaching, her showing up. at conferences. her being reported on in newspapers. her meeting with presidents that's going to follow. we know about those things. but what happened in the time in between? well, in this early period, she

moved to kingston, new york and we know she was working there. often, generally, for fairly well to do white families, who became fairly important to her in terms of certifying her dependability, not for jobs necessarily, which did apply, but for some of the legal actions that she needed to take. she did decide to move with her son, peter. to new york and she left the girls being taken care of by others down in ulster county. she increasingly started preaching at camp meetings and on street corners and get to that in just a second. in new york, she lived outside of the black community. if there was one. new york at this time, had a couple hundred thousand people and did not have any concentrated area of black population, like we're going to

see early in the next century in harlem. and she also joined a cult. the kingdom of mathias. and there's things that change, after she changes her name. she starts preaching more broadly. and she decides to share her story. as many ex-slaves were doing at this time. so, one of the major stories about her in that early period was that this young woman, illiterate, uneducated, walked much of new york and would not be helped because her baby boy, peter, who was only about six or seven years old, had been illegally sold. new york law prohibited the movement of slaves outside new york, in order to avoid the

emancipation law. he had been sold to his brother and to another and another and wound up being taken to alabama. by a plantation owner. and isabel, went to john dumont's wife and pleaded with her. went to the alabama plantation owner before she headed to alabama. she was from new york. and pleaded with her and they gave this slave woman no consideration at all, as a mother. which apparently really fired up isabel and she was able to get legal help. it took about a year but it was in this court house that the judge ruled that the child belonged with his mother and nobody else. it was traumatic for her because when peter was first brought back to her, he had been so traumatized by what, to him, had been presented as his mother's

abandonment, that he screamed and claimed she was not his mother. and it took a while before that trauma of slavery. she also discovered more trauma. bruised, scarred. he clearly had been beaten, whipped and brutalized down in alabama. in just that short amount of time. isabel kind of lost it and kind of did a curse for what had happened. the damage had been done to her son, should be doubled for those that did it. and sadly, she found out, soon afterward, that the wife of this planter had, herself, been beaten to death by her husband in alabama. there's a lot of trauma that went with this story. but she did get her son, peter and he will remain with her until he's about 19 years old. apparently a little bit of a wild child, a bit of a

rebellious teenager and one of the black leaders in new york recmenned that, like a lot of young men at that time, he needed to get his act together and they often sent young men to sea on the ships. and that would help them toughen up and turn their lives around. and so, that's what peter did. she got letters from him for a while, i think five, and then never heard from him again. so, there's no ending to the story. we don't know what happened. then there's the kingdom of mathias. if you want to read a scandalous book, you can read one on the kingdom of mathias. this is out of success struggling carpenter, who presented himself as a profit, presented himself as jesus christ. presented himself in different ways and was able to get some

wealthy people to give him money and give them property. and the property was just about 30 miles north of new york in what is now singh singh, or where the prison was, it was being built about this time. and he collected a variety of people, including isabel, who worked for him and apparently did a lot of heavy, difficult work. was beaten again and this is part of when historians see her as still struggling to reframe herself too, resee herself as somebody who doesn't deserve that and that isn't a natural part of how she should be treated or how anybody should be treated. what makes the story particularly useful for her, he turned the cult into a sex cult. he assigned people different partners. she, apparently, was safe from that.

she just wound up doing more and more work. as a result of these sexual relationships that were going on. one of the men, who was involved, died. they were accusations he had been poisoned. mathias was charged with the murder and because isabel was a supporter of him, she was then accused of being part of this murder. and she decided that it hurt her name and hurt her. so, she was able to sue the people who made the accusation and she won the looult. and she won $125. which, to us, i'd be happy to get $125 right now. but back in the mid1830s is probably the equivalent of at least 10,000, depending on how

you compute it and maybe closer to $100,000 in terms of how it placed you in the economic scale. so, this was a big moment for her to assert, earlier, her motherhood and now to assert her good name. that she could testify because she had to testify but they were not perceived to be honorable, trustworthy, people who, under oath, would tell the truth. and so, she had to get this validation from the many whites she knew and got money and support from them as well. these cases are adding up for her. as something is that she needs to redefine herself as a result of. and so, what happens is, in 1843, at the tail end of all of this, she makes a decision to

change her name. now, by this point too, she has become increasingly involved with elements of the -- what's collared the second -- called the second great awakening. a lot of direct, personal rethinking of one's connection with god. a lot of communication, a lot of preaching, a lot of camp revivals. a lot of, in many cases, yelling and physical demonstrations. and it was part for her of an element of methodism because she was a methodest. it was part of a direction called perfectionism, which was a strand of this at the time, which emphasized plain living, plain dress, which she will carry for the rest of her life, including the bonnet, the turbin and involved listening to the spirit, the holy spirit in

conveying him, which some people did in rousing meetings, which distressed her. she did not go for that at all. it emphasized pureification, ending corruption and you can see, as she went along, that was a very important part to her. and in fact, she argued that she had been called by the spirit to leave new york city, which she defined as a wicked city, which i guess maybe. we all might think of new york in that way when we get off of broadway or whatever. but there was a wickedness to this city and she had to leave and she left. and she started going and meeting people that she'd met before and going to various revivals. into new england and i'll show you in a minute, a map of the places she went. because this was a woman who went where she thought she was needed. and so, that need meant she was going to preach and if she was

going to preach the truth, and if she was going to travel, to do it, then sojourner truth. sojourner is somebody who days in the place briefly. visited and leaves. somebody who sojourns is going to stay in different places, not in one place. and for her, the idea is you told the truth and she will emphasize that over and over throughout her life. so, sojourner truth, often just sojourner for a lot of people. but this is the beginning of her travels. and what i did is i found a later map, 1880. but it shows you some of the places she went. and what some of the states that are developing as she was traveling because not all of them existed initially. she was going into brand new states and territories.

she winds up living and dying. she travels a lot and most of this is through walking. this was a strong woman, even when she was injured. she refused to take things easy. she even refused to be stopped. she tried to go into indiana right after indiana had passed a law. indiana didn't have slavlry but they also didn't want blacks. so, they passed a law prohibiting blacks from moving to the state. and she refused to let that stop her and was arrested as a result. but she kept struggling. she dressed plainly. and apron, shawl, bon, turbin. simple dresses generally. and you can tell by her image. she's very dark. she was often defined as not a mixed african-american, like fredric douglas, for example.

that she was a true african. we don't know anything beyond her parents. but some really struggled to deal with her. she clearly was not a lady in the way mid19th mid-19th centur, meaning white and middle and upper class ladies were. she didn't behave that way. she spoke out in public. she laughed. she sang. she was tall. she just did not fit the image of what she was supposed to meet which made her some people have argued less threatening and more likely to be listened to but also maybe more likely not to be taken seriously. so she was a combination there struggling with this. the average female was 5'3" and

the average man 5'7". today in the united states the average woman is 5'4", so it's not much difference. she was around 6 foot tall so she really stood out. and she had a strong kind of coarse voice. she was emphatic when she wanted to make her points, and then she was selling her narrative. because in 1850 she decided she needed to sell her story to tell her story as many freed slaves, run away slaves had done. frederick douglas being the most famous of them. and so she dictated this. now remember she was illiterate. she could not read or write. in fact, i think i have it here. that's the only writing we have of her, and that apparently is her effort to write her name.

that's all we have. the question is what was happening here? there's some suggestions that made she had a learning disability. maybe some birth defect or injury or something. there were efforts to teach her by some of the children or whatever and they said she just didn't get it. there's something not connecting with her whether it was obinstancy. and the question is how does she know so much about the bible because she refers to the bible a lot. she tended to have children read the bible to her. apparently if an adult read the bible and she asked them to repeat it and repeat it and

repeat it so she could understand they started adding their own commentary, they started adding their clarification. she didn't want that. she said children were just as patient could be. they would read it over and over to her so she could finally register and remember it. but for her narrative she dictated this to a white friend of hers. and this woman, olive gilbert, put it together with some commentary, and those are explicit. this is going to be the base of what we know about sojourner truth. later in life after the civil war additional editions will be published. some of those later editions will include her scrapbook. things she had collected over time. anything we have about her personal insight as a slave or

her years afterwards and what she doesn't want to say comes from this. i want to read you some things that appeared in the newspapers of the time. sojourner trug, the poor old slave woman reviewed the previous sermon with a power of discrimination. i never in my life and she melted it down until it was shown to be nothing to the purpose at all. though unable to read one word she exhibited a power of rude but keen analysis, such as most professional critics must covet in vain. one of the most famous ablegsest speakers said her appeal electrified the congregation in a manner not to be described.

sojourner truth commenced the evening meeting by a few brief remarks and would lend a helping hand presenting in quaint and homily form truths that would perchance be remembered longer than if they'd been clothed in the most elegant language. sojourner truth led off in words that scathed like the very lightenings. truth would sometimes throw in the way of the politicians a most ugly difficulty, a whole argument with premise, conclusion and application in a single question. she made one of her choice short speeches full of rich thoughts and marked by her confiding faith in truth and her earnest love of humanity. if there was no other count in the indictment against slavery than this, that it had doomed such a soul as hers to the long robberies and sorrows of

slavery. it were enough. enough to doom the policy of any church or party that should consent to such an outrage upon a human soul. a couple more. sojourner truth, a colored woman once a slave, spoke and gratified her audience highly. she showed beneath her dark skin there was a true womanly heart. she uttered some truths that told well. she said women set the world wrong by eating the forbidden fruit and now she was going to set it right. she said goodness never had any beginning. it was ever lasting and could never die. but eve had a beginning and must have an end. she expressed great reverence for god and faith that he will bring about his own purposes and plans. in fact, she had a meeting with frederick douglas who did not think all that well of her

uncolored speaking and behavior and all that but he was talking about his pessimism about the future of moerk, about black america. and her response was is god dead? he'll take care of it. is god dead and in fact that would be00 her tombstone. with her long bony arms she presents an appearance at ones grotesque and ludicrous and yet inspiring a degree of respect that commands attention. she carries not a tongue of fire but a heart of love. she did not support herself by these speeches. she would just sometimes show up, sometimes was invited. she supported herself by being there and selling her narrative and then later by selling her portraits. this was a period of what somebody calls cardo mania. these calling cards with her portrait. and on it, it refers to the fact

that she sells the shadow to support the substances. so she tells the image of her toport her in her life. probably most famous for this woman who certainly had to be a striking presence for most people was her involvement not just with the effort to argue against slavery but the effort for womens rights. and she's certainly well-known for that along with elizabeth katey stanton and others of the womens effort for suffrage in the 19th century. but most famous was her so-called aren't i a woman or ain't i a woman speech in ohio at the womens rights conference. kind of a mix of slavery and womens rights. allegedly she said that man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted

over ditches and to have to best place everywhere. nobody ever helps me into carriages or over mud puddles or gives me any best place and ain't i a woman? look at me, look at my arm. i have plowed and planted and gathered into barns. ain't i a woman? i could work as much and eat as much as a man. i have born 13 children, that's her report of what she said, and seen most all sold off to slavery. and when i cried out with my mother's grief none but jesus heard me and ain't i a woman. the problem with this speech is we don't know what she really said. and that goes back to the white audiences i was talking about. the person who recorded her for the newspaper, her speech, had a fairly short version of it.

years later i think it was the president of the association presented a much longer version, substantially longer. and we tend to go with the much, much longer version. it's a much more emphatic, demanding in your face sojourner truth. but it also seems to have more of a purpose for the womens rights movement. the woman was a major womens rights activist. so was this story distorted? was information changed? and also when you listen to this speech on youtube or wherever you do tend to get a southern accent to it, a real slave emphasis where you almost see the, the cotton fields. what one group has tried to do is find women who speak dutch and then have them read it.

they're english speakers but they have a dutch background to try and get a little bit more authenticity. and what they do is they've kind of recorded parts of each version of the speech rather than get anything really long. i have a very short clip of it, and this is what i was reading to you and you get this repetition of it. so let's see if this works. >> well, children, there must be something out of kilter. all talking about rights. what's all this here talking about. that man over there says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches and to

have the best place everywhere. nobody ever helps me into a carriage or over mud puddles or gives me the best place. ain't i a woman? this is just part of the mystery of sojourner truth. what did she say? how did she sound? what was her emphasis? why was she there? not just invitation or not invitation, but what was her intent for all of this? what was she trying to get across? because what happens after the 1850 narrative and beyond she's a crusader for a lot of things and that includes after the civil war -- during the civil war for the union and after the civil war for the freed people who now are crowding the streets of washington, d.c., for example, that she helps care for. but what's going to be their

fate? are they going to be dependent on the government? what's going to happen to them? so that's when he actually puts together a petition to try to get congress -- and she travels all over walking to get signatures to provide land in the west for them. she also meet with abraham lincoln. and as i have up there, this is not a photograph obviously. it's a painting done. and we do know, though, she met with lincoln. the problem is we don't know just like her ain't i a woman speech what exactly happened there. her account of it is very, very positive, that lincoln shook her hand, that lincoln was very positive to her, that she -- she thanked him for emancipating the slaves and he said, no, don't give me credit. others deserve it, too, in effect. and she said, you know, well, you're important to me and i've

heard of you have for a long time and he says i've heard of you, too. the story from the white woman who got her the meeting with lincoln indicates that lincoln was quite the opposite of all of that. he was not friendly. he was fairly sour when she met with her. he called her anti-a standard term for older black women. he clearly according to this woman who was called back in after sojourner trug was quickly ushered out did not want to talk about the emancipation proclamation, did not want to certainly discuss this with a black woman. so we get two stories again. so it's really difficult to know what's going on. we do know what happened with her petition. she never got it to congress, but the so-called exodusers of the 1870s did what she wanted,

they moved. african-americans moved west and setup their own farms and built their own homes and sought protection and help on their own. for sojourner truth she winds up in michigan, and i remember the first time i ran into that. i was going michigan, why michigan? well, she was invited there by some quakers, and apparently really liked this utopian village harmonia that was outside battle creek. so she wound up buying land there, buying land in battle creek and settling there as did her daughters and their husbands and children in all of that. and it was in battle creek that she died in 1883 at the age of 86. not 103, not 105 as her tombstone indicates. and her comment, is god dead,

not ain't i a woman, but is god dead. which i think she probably would like to have god on the tombstone with her. that in some ways seems like an abrupt end to a woman's life that was more than abrupt. and i like to think of sojourner truth as one of these women because black women have played major roles in american history. but those roles are generally not public. they're not national. they're not really studied. obviously these women indicate that there's some exceptions. these are women who made their mark in education, in government, in business, in civil rights movement, in many different ways. she certainly fits with them, but for most of these women you may not recognize all of them,

but these really are influential women of their times. when sojourner truth died, a young up-and-coming journalist and soon to be editor of a fairly major black newspaper noted that although the name of sojourner truth is familiar to many people, not more than one colored person out of ten knows who she is. and i would say in many ways the same is true today. the complication in many ways is she was a northerner not a southerner. she did not escape slavery. remember she walked away. she didn't escape slavery like harriet tubman or return numerous times and risk her life to rescue people. she walked away from slavery, and she went to court. she sang songs. she gave speeches. she stopped debates dead in their tracks with her focused comments. so i think i'm not the only one

in the country who's still a little bit lost about who sojourner truth really was. but one thing we all know, that she fought battles, battles in her internal life, battles with her family, battles with7atñ society. she fought battles, and she and the others have fought battles. for their rights, for their life, and i would certainly argue and i think she would totally agree for her country. >> weeknights this month we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview what's available every weekend on c-span 3. american history tv continues to mark womens history month. and tonight we'll show a 1987 film from ow real america series, crossing borders, the story of the womens international league for peace and freedom about the organization founded in 1915 to end world war i and from peace and womens rights.

watch tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span 3. >> american history tv on c-span 3, exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. coming up this weekend, saturday at 10:00 p.m. eastern on real america, with a recent announcement of this year's academy award nominees we feature three films that were nominated for or won academy awards. library of congress from 1945, with these hands from 1950, and why man creates from 19:68. sunday at 2:00 p.m. eastern, civil rights activist cleveland sellers recounts the 1968 orangeberg massacre where south carolina troopers fired on students protesting segregation. we visit the national museum of the u.s. army in virginia.

and at 6:45 p.m. eastern the smithsonian secretary lonny bunch and documentary filmmaker ken berns zz the challenge of telling the american story. watch american history tv this weekend on c-span 3. >> american history tv on c-span 3. every weekend documenting america's story. funding for american history tv comes from these companies who support c-span 3 as a public service. up next civil rights activist cleveland sellers talks about his work in the 1960s as a national leader with the student nonviolent coordinating committee. he also recounts the 1968 orangeburg massacre where south carolina state troopers fired on students protesting segregation.