Mighty Change, Tall Within

The religion-inspired metamorphosis of celebrated antebellum black resident Isabella Van Wagenen, later known as Sojourner Truth, illustrates how the abandonment of her slave identity and her refusal to call her new employer "master," was a liberation for blacks--a "mighty change." Moving from the colonial period to the present, this book underscores the mighty change in the identity of blacks in the region over nearly a four-hundred-year period--from captive to slave, from slave to free, from northern-born to southern-influenced, from pre-industrial to post-industrial, from multi-ethnic to multi-national. Like Isabella, in her successful determination to reclaim her son who had been wrongfully forced into slavery, black people within the region have stood "tall within."