An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

of their resistance to white encroachment. Walker represents the prophetic
doom of the US and democracy. While he did not live to see it come to
fruition in the form of a civil war, he understood that the United States
could not go on as it did.
SOJOURNER TRUTH: THE VOICE OF BLACK FEMINIST
ABOLITIONISM
On April 28, 2009, former First Lady Michelle Obama offered remarks at
the unveiling of the Sojourner Truth bust at the Capitol. To her audience,
she remarked, “I hope that Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a
descendant of slaves, serving as the First Lady of the United States of
America.” After a brief applause, she went on to explain how important it
was to have a Black woman represented in Emancipation Hall. “Now many
young boys and girls, like my own daughters, will come to Emancipation
Hall and see the face of a woman who looks like them,” she said. Before the
unveiling of the bust, Mrs. Obama connected the activism of Truth with the
idea of US democracy: “The power of this bust will not just be in the metal
that delineates Sojourner Truth’s face; it will also be in the message that
defines her legacy. Forever more, in the halls of one of our country’s
greatest monuments of liberty and equality, justice and freedom, Sojourner
Truth’s story will be told again and again and again and again.” 48
Sojourner Truth, the formerly enslaved woman who became an
abolitionist, is best known for her speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” High schools
and university students throughout the country read this speech, imagining
her bravely voicing her thoughts on enslaved Black women and the
problems white abolitionists had with race and gender. Truth has become a
national symbol, voice of Black feminist freedom of the nineteenth century.
In fact, she was perhaps that century’s most important Black female
abolitionist and rhetorician. Historian Nell Irvin Painter remarks, “We think
of Truth as a natural, uncomplicated presence in our national life. Rather
than a person in history, she works as a symbol.” 49 Yet, as Mrs. Obama’s
speech demonstrates, Sojourner Truth the person is largely ignored. As
Painter further contends, “Because we are apt to assume that the mere
experience of enslavement endowed Truth with the power to voice its evils,
we may forget a shocking fact: No other woman who had been through the