Week 10 Primary Source Workshop: Checking a Draft Exhibit Label on The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

Part 1 — The Big Picture

Exhibit labels, websites, and chatbot summaries all retell Sojourner Truth's life, and many of them call her narrative a book she wrote herself, merge its two dates, or treat a later heading as its own words. This week you learned how a dictated narrative names both a teller and a writer, and how the revivals and reform movements of these decades, abolition among them, changed the country. In this workshop you act as a researcher checking a draft exhibit label before it is printed: you source the narrative, test eight label statements against the record, close-read its pinned fragment, corroborate its dates with the National Park Service, catch a chatbot making the same kinds of slips, and present your reading in one plain sentence.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: What does The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a dictated narrative of 1850 told by Truth and written by Olive Gilbert, show about Truth's life and the promise of freedom her enslaver broke, whose words reach the page, and which statements in an illustrative draft exhibit label survive a check against the record?

Workshop data: Eight statements from an illustrative draft exhibit label about The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

Source: Eight statements from an illustrative draft exhibit label written for this workshop and printed in full in Part 4; they come from no real museum, and you check each one against The Narrative of Sojourner Truth as the Avalon Project presents it, against the National Park Service's Sojourner Truth page, and against Chapter 10.

• Rows: 8 statements, one row each in the audit table
• Columns: statement, verdict, which record you used, and a corrected sentence
• Records to check against: the Avalon Project page for the narrative, the National Park Service's Sojourner Truth page, and Chapter 10

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• DocsTeach (National Archives, free) or the Library of Congress digital collections (free)
• The Avalon Project page for The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
• The National Park Service's Sojourner Truth page
• A notebook or any free note-taking app
• One approved chatbot
• Any free audio or video recorder, or a phone's voice memo app

Ways of working

• source-a-primary-document
• contextualize-and-corroborate
• close-read-for-what-the-text-says-and-omits
• present-and-defend-the-analysis

Procedure

1. Open the Avalon Project page for The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, linked on this week's Readings & Resources page. Find the lines at the top that name Olive Gilbert, the sentence near the start on Truth's birth, and the passage on her enslaver's promise of free papers. Use your browser's find command (Ctrl+F, or Cmd+F on a Mac) to search for 1828. Keep Chapter 10, Section 4, open beside it. Tool: The Avalon Project page for The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Check: You can find the heading naming Gilbert, the pinned sentence on her birth, the passage on the promise, and the place the narrative gives 1828.
2. Fill in the sourcing table for the narrative: who told it and who wrote it, when it is dated and what the heading says, why and for whom it was made, its type, and the host that keeps the text. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: All five sourcing rows have an answer, and the first row names both the teller and the writer.
3. For each of the eight label statements, check the Avalon page and Chapter 10, then write Supported, Contradicted, or Goes beyond the source in the second column and name the record in the third. Write a corrected sentence for every statement that is not Supported. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Every row has a verdict and a named record, and every row that is not Supported has a corrected sentence.
4. Count your second column by hand and copy the three counts into the tally table, checking that they add up to the number of statements. Check: The three counts add up to 8, one for each statement.
5. Open the National Park Service's Sojourner Truth page, also on this week's Readings & Resources page. Use your browser's find command to search for 1827 and for 1826, and write in your close-reading table what the page says about New York's emancipation law and about when Truth left her enslaver. Tool: The National Park Service's Sojourner Truth page. Check: Your table names what the park service page dates to 1827 and to 1826, beside what the narrative itself says.
6. Search the Library of Congress digital collections or DocsTeach for the words Sojourner Truth, and note in your close-reading table whether the search finds a record connected to her and what kind of document it is. Tool: DocsTeach (National Archives, free) or the Library of Congress digital collections (free). Check: Your table names the search words you used and either describes the record you found or says that no record turned up.
7. Complete the close-reading table: say what the pinned fragment says and whose voice it is in, what the narrative leaves out, what was happening around it, and how the park service page confirms or complicates its dates, then write one plain sentence. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: The table ends in one plain sentence that names what the narrative shows and what it does not.
8. Run the AI-critique step in Part 6 with one approved chatbot, or take the equivalent route printed there, and write your critique report. Tool: One approved chatbot. Check: Your report quotes at least two errors and corrects each with evidence from the Avalon page, the park service page, your tables, or Chapter 10.
9. Present and defend your reading: record a two-minute spoken explanation, or write its script, that sources the narrative by its teller and its writer, gives your close reading, names your corroborating source, and ends in your one plain sentence. Tool: Any free audio or video recorder, or a phone's voice memo app. Check: The explanation runs about two minutes, or about 250 words as a script, and ends in one plain sentence.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if the Avalon page or the park service page will not load in your browser.

Check the label statements against the record facts printed in the table below, which restate the Avalon page, the park service page, and Chapter 10 in the course's own words, and tally your second column by hand, showing that the counts add up to 8. Then complete every scaffold table, analysis question, the critique step, and the spoken explanation, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

These record facts restate the Avalon page, the park service page, and Chapter 10, so you can check the statements without loading the pages.

Fallback model data

Record fact	Where it comes from
The page says the narrative was written by Olive Gilbert, based on information provided by Sojourner Truth; its heading also says Dictated by Sojourner Truth, edited by Olive Gilbert, and gives her life as about 1797 to 1883.	Avalon Project page for the narrative
The narrative is dated 1850 and is a dictated narrative: Truth told her life, and Gilbert wrote it down.	Avalon Project page; Chapter 10, Section 4
The pinned fragment reads: born, as near as she can now calculate, between the years 1797 and 1800. The narrative speaks of Truth as she throughout.	Avalon Project page; Chapter 10, Section 4
In paraphrase, the narrative says Truth was to have been free on 4 July 1827, the day her enslaver had promised her free papers, a year before the date the State had fixed; he refused to keep the promise.	Avalon Project page; Chapter 10, Section 5
The narrative places her emancipation by the State in 1828.	Avalon Project page; Chapter 10, Section 5
The park service page dates New York's final emancipation day to 1827, under a law of 1817, and says Truth freed herself and her infant daughter in 1826.	National Park Service's Sojourner Truth page; Chapter 10, Section 5
The narrative describes Truth attending camp meetings; it does not by itself show what caused her to speak against slavery.	Avalon Project page; Chapter 10, Sections 1 and 7
A told life set down by someone else is primary for the teller's own experience, read with the writer and the gap in time in mind.	Chapter 10, Section 7

Part 4 — The Scaffold

The data come first: eight statements from an illustrative draft exhibit label about the narrative, with columns for your verdict, the record you checked, and a corrected sentence.

Student scaffold table 1

Statement	Supported, Contradicted, or Goes beyond the source	Which record	Corrected sentence
S1. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth is a dictated narrative: Sojourner Truth told her life, and Olive Gilbert wrote it down.
S2. The narrative is dated 1850.
S3. Sojourner Truth wrote the narrative in her own hand.
S4. The narrative says she was born, as near as she can now calculate, between the years 1797 and 1800.
S5. The narrative's pinned birth sentence gives one exact year for her birth.
S6. Because the narrative calls Truth she, Olive Gilbert must have made the story up.
S7. The narrative is a secondary source, because someone other than Truth wrote it down.
S8. Because Truth went to camp meetings and later spoke against slavery, the revivals caused her to become an abolitionist.

Tally your second column so you can read the audit as a small dataset.

Student scaffold table 2

Verdict	Count
Supported
Contradicted
Goes beyond the source
Total

Source the narrative itself, one sourcing question per row, before you read it closely.

Student scaffold table 3

Sourcing question	Your answer for the narrative
Who told it, and who wrote it down
When it is dated, and what the page heading says
Why, and for whom
What type of document it is
Which host keeps the text you read

Close-read the pinned fragment and set the narrative's dates beside the park service page to corroborate or complicate them.

Student scaffold table 4

Move	Your reading
What the fragment says, and whose voice it is in
What the narrative leaves out
Context: what was happening around it
The narrative's 1827 sentence: what its words was to have been free state, and what they leave open
Corroboration: what the park service page dates to 1827 and to 1826
Library or DocsTeach search: words used and what turned up
One plain sentence

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Using your tally table, how many statements are Supported, how many are Contradicted, and how many Go beyond the source? Show that your three counts add up to the number of statements.
2. Which statement gives the narrative to the wrong hand, and what do the lines at the top of the Avalon page show instead?
3. One statement turns the narrative's birth fragment into a single exact year. Quote the fragment word for word and explain what its own words give instead.
4. Using your close-reading table, how does the National Park Service's page confirm or complicate the narrative's own dates? Name the source, say what it adds, and say why a reader checks a dictated narrative against other sources.
5. Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences. (a) Name two things this narrative cannot tell a historian about Truth's own words, and say what kind of evidence each would need. (b) Explain how a narrative written down by a sympathetic writer for readers in 1850 limits what you can say about the events it describes.

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed Week 10 Primary Source Workshop tables above. They check an illustrative draft exhibit label about The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Please do six things. First, summarize the narrative in three sentences and say who told it, who wrote it, what kind of document it is, and when it is dated. Second, quote the sentence on her birth word for word and say what it gives as her birth. Third, say which event the narrative ties to the year 1827 and which year it gives for her emancipation by the State. Fourth, say whether the narrative is a primary or a secondary source, and whether her going to camp meetings proves the revivals caused her to oppose slavery. Fifth, say which founding document the Declaration of Sentiments of 1848 was modeled on, and whether the Articles of Confederation let Congress tax. Sixth, in one short paragraph, connect this story to earlier American history and preview how it leads to later U.S. history through 1877.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often call the narrative a secondary source because Olive Gilbert wrote it, or treat a modern summary of Truth's life as if it were the narrative itself.
• A chatbot setting the long background may say the meeting of Europeans and Native peoples was a conquest from its first day.
• A chatbot tracing American history back from New York may call Jamestown the oldest European settlement in what became the United States.
• A chatbot describing the farms of Truth's New York may say maize or potatoes came to the Americas from Europe.
• Chatbots often say that because Truth attended revivals and later spoke against slavery, the revivals caused her abolitionism, or that the Second Great Awakening alone caused every reform movement.
• A chatbot may call Truth an indentured servant who had agreed to serve a term of years before going free.
• Chatbots often say the Declaration of Sentiments of 1848 was modeled on the Constitution, or give the Constitution the year 1776.
• A chatbot previewing the government reformers petitioned may say the Articles of Confederation gave Congress the power to tax.
• A chatbot connecting the reformers to earlier politics may say the Federalists who campaigned for the Constitution in 1788 were the Federalist Party of the 1790s.
• A chatbot quoting the founders on liberty may credit Washington's Farewell Address with the phrase entangling alliances with none.
• Chatbots often give Truth's birth as 1797 from the archive's heading, or call Gilbert only the editor because the page heading says so.
• A chatbot previewing later history may treat the Missouri Compromise line and popular sovereignty as one rule.
• A chatbot previewing later history may say the reformers' quarrel over slavery was the same quarrel over taxation that caused the Revolution.
• A chatbot running ahead may say the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed every enslaved person, finishing the abolitionists' work.
• A chatbot listing later amendments may say the 14th Amendment gave Black men the vote.
• A chatbot previewing Truth's later life may describe Reconstruction as one policy from start to finish.

Write 3–5 sentences naming one thing the chatbot got right and at least two places it went wrong or ran ahead, quoting its words and correcting each with evidence from the Avalon page, the park service page, your tables, or Chapter 10; flag any slip about later history as something the course takes up later.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "The Narrative of Sojourner Truth is Truth's own autobiography, which she wrote in her own hand, and the archive's heading, which gives her birth as about 1797, is the narrative's own statement of her birth year. Because someone else later printed it, it is a secondary source. It says New York State freed her on the day her enslaver chose, in 1827, and before that she had served out a term of years as an indentured servant. Because she went to camp meetings and later spoke against slavery, the revivals caused her to become an abolitionist, and the Declaration of Sentiments of 1848 copied the Constitution of 1776. Earlier, the country began at Jamestown, the first European settlement in what became the United States; the meeting of peoples in the Americas was a conquest from its first day; Europeans brought maize and potatoes to the Americas; the Articles of Confederation let Congress tax; the Federalists of 1788 were the Federalist Party; and Washington's Farewell Address told the nation to keep entangling alliances with none. Later, the Missouri Compromise line and popular sovereignty were one rule, the Civil War grew from the same taxation quarrel as the Revolution, the Emancipation Proclamation freed every enslaved person, the 14th Amendment gave Black men the vote, and Reconstruction was one policy." Mark it up: quote each flawed sentence, name what is wrong (a dictated narrative read as the teller's own writing, an archive's heading read as the narrative's own text, a primary source for the teller's experience called secondary, the promise of free papers merged with the State's action, slavery called a term of servitude, a pattern read as a cause, the Declaration of Independence confused with the Constitution, Jamestown placed before St. Augustine, contact called conquest, the exchange run in the wrong direction, the Articles confused with the Constitution, the ratification-era Federalists confused with the later party, Jefferson's phrase given to Washington, or a later-week confusion to flag because a later week takes it up), cite the evidence from the Avalon page, the park service page, your tables, or Chapter 10, and write a corrected sentence beneath it. This route assesses the same objectives (Objective 1 and Objective 6) as the chatbot critique, takes comparable effort (about 30 minutes and 250–350 words), is scored by the same scoring criteria for the same credit, and its own submission artifact is the marked-up flawed analysis, submitted in place of the chatbot share link and report.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• All four completed scaffold tables
• Written answers to all five analysis questions
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis
• The two-minute spoken or recorded explanation, or its written script

Deliverable:

A short Primary Source Workshop report on The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: four completed tables (the label audit, the tally, the sourcing table, and the close-reading table), written answers to five analysis questions, a critique of a chatbot's answer about the narrative, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis, and a two-minute spoken explanation or its written script. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose a written, spoken, or recorded form for your answers; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Sourcing the narrative	All five sourcing rows are answered from the record: Sojourner Truth as teller and Olive Gilbert as writer, the date of 1850 with the page heading named as the archive's label, the purpose of telling her life to readers, a dictated narrative as its type, and the Avalon Project as host.	Most rows are answered, but the writer is left out, the narrative is called Truth's own writing, or the host is not named.	The sourcing table is missing, or its answers are copied from a chatbot without checking the record.
Auditing the label against the record	All eight statements carry a verdict and a named record, every statement that is not Supported has a corrected sentence, and the tally counts add up to 8.	The audit is attempted, but one or two verdicts are wrong, a corrected sentence or record is missing, or a count is off.	No audit is recorded, or the verdicts come from a chatbot with no record named.
Close reading, context, and corroboration	The fragment is read for what it says and for the writer's voice in it, the narrative is set in the decades of revival and reform and the end of slavery in New York, its 1827 sentence is read for what the words was to have been free state and checked against the park service page or another named source, and the reading ends in one plain sentence.	The close reading is attempted, but the corroborating source is unnamed, or the two dates are blurred.	No close reading or corroboration appears.
Critique of the chatbot or of the printed flawed analysis	On either route, at least two errors are quoted and corrected with evidence from the Avalon page, the park service page, the tables, or Chapter 10, later-week slips are flagged as coming later, and one correct point is acknowledged; both routes earn this band equally.	On either route, errors are named but corrected without evidence, or only one error is caught.	No critique appears, or pasted output is submitted without any checking.
Presenting and defending the reading	The spoken explanation or its script sources the narrative by its teller and its writer, gives the close reading, names the corroborating source, and ends in one plain sentence that says what the narrative shows and what it does not.	The explanation is given, but one of those moves is missing or the plain sentence overclaims what the narrative shows.	No explanation or script is submitted.
Reflection on the limits of the source	The chosen reflection option is answered in 3–4 sentences that name a specific limit of a dictated narrative and the evidence it would need.	The reflection is answered but stays general.	No reflection is submitted.

Quality Gate

• Every verdict in the audit table names the record it came from, the Avalon page, the park service page, or Chapter 10, never a chatbot.
• The three tally counts add up to 8, one for each statement.
• The narrative is sourced by both its teller, Sojourner Truth, and its writer, Olive Gilbert, with its date, type, and host.
• Every quotation matches the pinned fragment word for word, capitals and punctuation included; no quotation, date, person, or document is invented anywhere in the submission.
• The submission reads the narrative's 1827 sentence for what its words state rather than as the day she became free, writes any day-level date day first, reads religion as history without judging a belief, and compares no reform of the 1830s or 1840s with any present-day cause.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence from the record or the chapter.
• The spoken explanation or its script ends in one plain sentence that names what the narrative shows and what it does not.