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(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 ....

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... one master scarred her for life when she was only nine years old. Like many enslaved African Americans, Isabella was sold several times, as were her siblings and children, 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 morni ...