Court Documents Uncover How Sojourner Truth Became the First Black Woman in History to Win Her Son s Freedom thewestsidegazette.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thewestsidegazette.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Victor Omondi The 200-year-old proceedings of abolitionist Sojourner Truth’s quest for the release of her youngest enslaved son, Peter, were discovered buried beneath 5,000 cubic feet of court records at the New York State Archives. Following the abolitionist’s fight against her previous owner and the Albany Supreme Court, archivist, author, and historian James D. […]
Documents dating back over 200 years have been recovered, revealing details about a historical court case of abolitionist Sojourner Truth fighting for the
African American mother and children in peach vignette, c. 1885. Smithsonian American Art Museum.
As Black parents attempted to reunify their families in the wake of gradual emancipation, institutionalization, and indenture in the early nineteenth century, the discourse on Black child-rearing evolved to reflect their daily activism. The treatment of African American children and the activism of their parents were often led by Black women, who renegotiated racialized constructions of motherhood depicting “deviant,” powerless Black mothers. In their actions and discourse, northern African American women represented Black motherhood in ways that led to the development of radical forms of abolitionist activism and early Black feminism. Within their gendered constraints, northern African American women challenged the very constructions of motherhood by assigning political authority to their embodiments of maternal care.