Beginning of Essay
(c. 1797-1883) is perhaps the most famous black woman in American history, but only recently have historians begun to discover new "truths" about her. A slave for nearly thirty years, the illiterate Truth gained fame as an itinerant minister and outspoken advoca ....

Middle of Essay
.... a reminder that slave masters in Northern states were no less cruel and profit-minded than those of the South. Throughout her own life story, Truth documents her double bondage as an African American and a woman in a society dominated by whites and men. Female slaves, for example, often did both men's and women's work. One master boasted of Isabella that she was "better to me than a man -- for she will do a good family's washing in the night, and be ready in the morning to go into the field, where she will do as much at raking and binding as my best hands." Once she gained her freedom, Truth labored as a domestic servant but remained poor, as ....