This print is sixth in a series of fifteen linoleum cuts that Catlett created to commemorate Black women’s labor and to honor renowned heroines. Born Isabella Baumfree to an enslaved family in nineteenth-century Ulster County, New York, Sojourner Truth became an influential antislavery activist, memoirist, and feminist. Catlett shows her as a commanding figure, filling the picture plane, who stares out toward the viewer with a penetrating gaze. Truth’s strong, somewhat oversized hands—one points heavenward while the other rests next to a Bible—testify to her faith and commitment to the cause of abolition. One senses the artist’s own hand at work in the deep, direct incising of lines that characterizes her printmaking technique.
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Title:In Sojourner Truth I Fought for the Rights of Women as well as Negroes, from “The Negro Woman” series
Artist:Elizabeth Catlett (American and Mexican, Washington, D.C. 1915–2012 Cuernavaca)
Date:1947
Medium:Linocut
Dimensions:18 13/16 × 12 1/4 in. (47.8 × 31.1 cm)
Classification:Prints
Credit Line:Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 1999
Accession Number:1999.529.30
Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right, in graphite): E Catlett 1947
[Maria O'Higgins, until 1990; sold on February 1, 1990 to Williams]; Reba and Dave Williams, New York (1990–99; their gift to MMA)
Washington D.C. Barnett Aden Gallery. "Paintings, Sculpture and Prints of the Negro Woman by Elizabeth Catlett," December 1947–January 1948, no. 21 (as "In Sojourner Truth I Fought for the Rights of Women as well as Negroes") [possibly this edition].
Hannes Meyer, ed. TGP Mexico: El Taller de Gráfica Popular, doce años de obra artistica colectiva. The Workshop for Popular Graphic Art, a Record of Twelve Years of Collective Work. Mexico City, 1949, ill. no. 525, p. 66, calls it "Sojourner Truth fought for the rights of women as well as negroes".
Samella Lewis. The Art of Elizabeth Catlett. Claremont, Calif., 1984, p. 186 (unknown edition), calls it "I'm Sojourner Truth. I Fought for the Rights of Women as well as Negroes" and dates it 1946–47.
Linda Duke. The Black Woman in America: Prints by Elizabeth Catlett. Exh. cat., Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Urbana-Champaign, 1993, unpaginated, no. 5, ill. (not this edition, lent courtesy of Lloyd G. Trotter, Plainville, Conn.), calls it "In Sojourner Truth I Fought for the Rights of Women as Well as Blacks" from the series "The Black Woman in America" (1946–47).
Richard J. Powell inElizabeth Catlett: Works on Paper, 1944–1992. Ed. Jeanne Zeidler. Exh. cat., Hampton University Museum. Hampton, Va., 1993, pp. 52, 64, no. 10, ill. p. 5 (not this edition), calls it "In Sojourner Truth I Fought for the Rights of Women as well as Blacks" from "The Negro Woman Series"; dates it 1946.
Martha Kearns. "Catlett, Elizabeth (1919–)." North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Ed. Jules Heller and Nancy Heller. 1995, p. 118, mentions this work as part of "I am the Black Woman" series (1946–47).
Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins and Shifra M. Goldman. In the Spirit of Resistance: African-American Modernists and the Mexican Muralist School. Exh. cat., Studio Museum in Harlem. New York, 1996, p. 130, no. 46, ill. (not this edition, Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.), call it "In Sojourner Truth, I Fought for the Rights of Women (En Sojourner Truth, luché por los derechos de las mujeres)".
Richard J. Powell and Jock Reynolds. To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Exh. cat., Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Andover, Mass., 1999, pp. 181–82, no. 52 (not this edition, Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Va.), call it "Black Women Series: I am the Negro Woman: In Sojourner Truth, I Fought for the Rights of Women" and date it 1946.
Melanie Anne Herzog inFor My People: The Art of Elizabeth Catlett. Ed. Midori Yoshimoto. Exh. cat., New Jersey City University Galleries. Jersey City, 2006, pp. 13, 15, 46, no. 13 (not this edition, collection of Reverend Douglass Moore and Dr. Doris Hughes-Moore, Washington D.C.), calls it "In Sojourner Truth I fought for the rights of women as well as Negroes" from "The Negro Woman" series (1946–47).
Daniel Schulman inA Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Ed. Daniel Schulman. Exh. cat., Spertus Museum. Chicago, 2009, pp. 68–69, 120, 152, colorpl. 41 (not this edition, Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.), calls it "In Sojourner Truth I fought for the rights of women as well as Negroes," from "The Negro Woman" (1946–47).
Anita Bateman. "Narrative and Seriality in Elizabeth Catlett's Prints." Journal of Black Studies 47 (April 2016), pp. 261–62, dates it 1946–47.
Salamishah Tillet. "Tweaking Time to Grasp a Trauma." New York Times (November 20, 2021), p. C6, ill. (color).
"Light Years: The Met’s Afrofuturist Period Room Thinks Inside the Box." artforum.com. December 2, 2021.
Ian Alteveer, Hannah Beachler, and Sarah Lawrence in "Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 79 (Winter 2022), p. 12.
Re'al Christian. "Refusing the Here–Now: An Afrofuturist Period Room and Black Fugitivity in the Undercommons." Art Papers Magazine 45 (Summer 2022), p. 21.
The artist reprinted the series of 15 linoleum cuts in 1989 with the updated title "The Black Woman."
Elizabeth Catlett (American and Mexican, Washington, D.C. 1915–2012 Cuernavaca)
1947
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