Sojourner’s Truth Confession of a Skeptic

By Edward Shanahan Caught up in the exuberant sense of accomplishment at the recent unveiling of the Sojourner Truth statue, I could not help but recall the first public discussion of the proposed memorial in the auditorium of the old Florence Grammar School nearly 10 years ago. The slim audience seemed somewhat evenly divided between those who had signed on completely to the idea of erecting a statue to the former slave, women’s rights advocate and Florence resident and those who wondered aloud about the appropriateness of a costly statue. There might even have been some in the crowd, while remaining silent, who found the whole idea of a memorial to some black figure from the distant past to be distasteful.

At the time, I found myself siding with those who argued that spending a lavish sum of money on a statue was wasteful. A better way to honor Sojourner Truth would be to create an endowment to be used for educational purposes, such as scholarships and other programs aimed at promoting a better understanding of the history and reality of slavery and advancing the cause of civil rights.

I might even have expressed something along those lines in a newspaper column I used to write.

After listening to further debate on the issue, I started to come around, even though I remained skeptical that the necessary funds for the memorial and statue could ever be scraped together.

And when the state legislature approved a $100,000 grant to cover half the cost of the project, I was even more skeptical about taking public funds for what should be a private undertaking, free of government involvement.

But as the forces behind the memorial gathered enthusiasm and strength, I had to concede I was wrong, right from the start. Admitting to error is one thing, but changing my mind completely is not something I’m often accused of doing, even in my domestic realm.

Almost simultaneously with the early discussion of a Sojourner Truth statue, I began to become more familiar with the utopian community that functioned in Florence in the 1840s. At the then Northampton Historical Society, I had heard British historian Christopher Clark discuss his book, "Communitarian Moment, the Radical Challenge of the Northampton Association." I also was reading William McFeely’s biography of Frederick Douglas, which made frequent reference to Douglas’s many visits to meet with Northampton and Florence Abolitionists.

At the same time, Ann and I visited the statue and memorial in New Haven which was completed in 1992 and which commemorated the Amistad slave revolt. The Rev. Peter Ives of the First Churches had been involved in that effort and shown a film of how the New Haven community came to create such a memorial on the steps of City Hall.

Finally, serendipitously, a few years later, I got roped into being in a play about Sojourner Truth and the Northampton Association, written by a group of Mount Holyoke students, directed by Rena Down, an accomplished television writer and theater director, and performed several times over two weekends at Smith College. During the course of the rehearsals and the play I must have heard Sojourner’s famous speech "Ain’t I a Woman," recited more than 100 times, and it was always moving.

Add to this, the increasing interest in this period by the work of historians Paul Gaffney and Steve Strimmer of the Florence Association, and I was convinced of the necessity for a Sojourner Truth Memorial, even making small financial donations, while still dubious that it would even come to fruition.

But come to fruition it did, almost 10 years later, and what a celebratory event it was on that sun-splashed Sunday afternoon in early October.

Sculptor Thomas Jay Warren has produced a mesmerizing presence of Sojourner Truth, in just the right setting, hard by the Park Street home that she occupied in those long forgotten days.

I suspect this statue and memorial and the dogged work of those who have honored Sojourner Truth are destined to have a more profound educational impact about civil rights and the shame of slavery through the coming decades than any scholarship fund ever could.

I’m proud to have been wrong.