Sojourner Truth, the formerly enslaved abolitionist, women's rights advocate, and itinerant preacher, sits for her iconic copyrighted carte de visite portrait, captioned in printed script below the image "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance" with her name in bold block letters beneath. The albumen print is mounted on a card with double-rule borders and originates from the photographic sittings Truth made in Detroit in 1864, when she registered the copyright in her own name in the Clerk's Office of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. A penciled inscription on the reverse reads "Visited at our house March 30th 1871," recording a direct personal encounter with Truth during her travels.

Sojourner Truth is shown seated three-quarter length in a dark dress with a fringed white shawl crossed over her shoulders and a white cap tied beneath her chin. She holds knitting needles and a strand of yarn in her lap, and a small bouquet in a vase rests on a tasseled table at her right, beside an open book. Her gaze is directed slightly to her left, composed and steady. The painted backdrop and floor are plain, focusing all attention on the sitter and her domestic implements of dignified labor.

Born Isabella Baumfree into slavery in Ulster County, New York around 1797, she escaped to freedom in 1826 and became one of the most influential reformers of the nineteenth century, delivering her landmark "Ain't I a Woman" speech at the 1851 Ohio Women's Rights Convention and meeting with President Lincoln in 1864. The March 30, 1871 inscription falls during her documented New England and Northeast petition tour of 1870 and 1871, when she traveled through the region gathering signatures on her petition to Congress seeking the allocation of public lands in the West to formerly enslaved people. She is recorded as speaking on January 1, 1871 in Boston for the eighth anniversary of emancipation, and on April 22, 1871 at the Seventh Day Baptist church in Alfred, New York, placing her firmly in the Northeast at the time this card was personally inscribed.

The reverse bears the printed federal copyright registration "Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1864, by Sojourner Truth, in the Clerk's Office, of the U.S. District Court, for the Eastern District of Michigan," followed by the manuscript inscription in period ink "Visited at our house March 30th 1871."