reading sojourner's truth wikipedia page again. truly an epic (in the antiquated sense) american.

born into slavery, experienced the reality of slavery as child sex trafficking, last saw her lover when he was beaten after he snuck over from a neighboring farm to hers. lived an awful awful life until liberation and, despite being illiterate, became the pre-eminent scholar of a better world. she started her lifes work in her 40s and 50s and kept going until she died in the 1880s.

almost all the conditions of her life must have precluded any ounce of optimism and the horrors she endured were worse than any of us can imagine. she had none of the cards and yet she persisted.

she grew up with america being a recent concept, a new thing people were still figuring out. but she was bound within the institution of the atlantic slave trade, a centuries-old institution of a evil that just seems endemic to society.

her contemporary abolitionists were digging up pre-constitutional colonial records of protests against slavery. they were looking back 150 years to documents of quaker protests and colonial-era bands in the same way we ought to be looking back 150 years to abolitionists and feminists who predate the term feminism

there's just no way not to had a basic understanding of sojourner truth and not be proud of and inspired by her.

and the thing is that there are at least dozens of american heroes of the same magnitude of legend, who are so storied so as to be almost unbelievable and unrecognizable today