'Heroic Souls': The Activist Memory of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Nottingham
Department Name: American and Canadian Studies
Abstract
My project is the first comprehensive study of the memory of 19th century African American female
abolitionists. In placing activist memories of these antislavery campaigners during the 20th and 21st
centuries at the centre of a wider debate about the use of historical figures in the black freedom
struggle, I show how traditional notions of black female leadership have shaped these representations
of black women. I focus on Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, the only two black female abolitionists
to achieve iconic status in public memory. I show how writers, artists and activists shaped their images
to both echo and challenge 20th and 21st century ideas on race and resistance, mainly regarding nonviolent
protest and white male leadership as the dominant modes of anti-racist activism. Using an
interdisciplinary methodology that draws on texts, sculptures, murals and artwork, I chart the evolution
of Tubman and Truth's representations from the late 19th century to today. After chapter one's analysis
of how both women self-consciously shaped the memories of their abolitionism in the Reconstruction
period, I examine how their images evolved over key periods of black activism: the anti-lynching
movement of the 1890s-1930s, the classic civil rights era of the 1940-60s, Black Power and post-civil
rights activism in the 1960-90s and the Obama era and Black Lives Matter from 2000 on. By
demonstrating how and why artists and campaigners adapted Tubman and Truth's memory to serve
the needs of each period, I explore more broadly the ways that 20th and 21st century activists used the
antislavery movement as a microcosm of the black freedom struggle. This project evolved from my MA
dissertation on the memory of Tubman, wherein I recovered many unexamined representations of
Tubman in children's literature. My PhD extends this research to cover 100 years of representations,
with a focus on activist memory, added depictions of Tubman and numerous little-known portrayals of
Truth.
abolitionists. In placing activist memories of these antislavery campaigners during the 20th and 21st
centuries at the centre of a wider debate about the use of historical figures in the black freedom
struggle, I show how traditional notions of black female leadership have shaped these representations
of black women. I focus on Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, the only two black female abolitionists
to achieve iconic status in public memory. I show how writers, artists and activists shaped their images
to both echo and challenge 20th and 21st century ideas on race and resistance, mainly regarding nonviolent
protest and white male leadership as the dominant modes of anti-racist activism. Using an
interdisciplinary methodology that draws on texts, sculptures, murals and artwork, I chart the evolution
of Tubman and Truth's representations from the late 19th century to today. After chapter one's analysis
of how both women self-consciously shaped the memories of their abolitionism in the Reconstruction
period, I examine how their images evolved over key periods of black activism: the anti-lynching
movement of the 1890s-1930s, the classic civil rights era of the 1940-60s, Black Power and post-civil
rights activism in the 1960-90s and the Obama era and Black Lives Matter from 2000 on. By
demonstrating how and why artists and campaigners adapted Tubman and Truth's memory to serve
the needs of each period, I explore more broadly the ways that 20th and 21st century activists used the
antislavery movement as a microcosm of the black freedom struggle. This project evolved from my MA
dissertation on the memory of Tubman, wherein I recovered many unexamined representations of
Tubman in children's literature. My PhD extends this research to cover 100 years of representations,
with a focus on activist memory, added depictions of Tubman and numerous little-known portrayals of
Truth.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Zoe Trodd (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Charlotte James (Student) |