When news of the executive order on immigration broke last week, I was looking at a photograph of Sojourner Truth. The picture had been open on my desk for days—an object of an essay I’m writing—and its content struck a particular and heartrending chord.
I was hopeful a few weeks ago, on Halloween weekend, when I drove to Seneca Falls, New York. There, in 1848, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other reformers organized the first Women’s Rights Convention...