Runaway slave Sojourner Truth gained fame in the nineteenth century as an abolitionist, feminist, and orator and earned a living partly by selling cartes de visite of herself at lectures and by mail. This book explores how she used her image, the press, the postal service, and copyright laws to support her activism and herself.

Richly illustrated, Enduring Truths examines the freed slave Sojourner Truth, who achieved fame in the nineteenth century as an orator and abolitionist, and who, though illiterate, earned a living on the anti-slavery lecture circuit in part by selling cartes-de-visite of herself. Cartes-de-visitesimilar in format to post cardsoffered a mode of mass communication back in the day. Even then, they were collectible novelties. Virtually every celebrity used them to purvey their own countenance in order to become part of the popular imagination of a society. Sojourner Truth aspired to nothing less. These photographs of her are famous, and they have been commented upon before, but they have not received the kind of in-depth, nuanced cultural analysis offered in this book."