Harriet Jacobs (1813 or 1815 – March 7,
1897) was an African-American writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life
of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now
considered an "American classic".
Born into slavery in Edenton,
North Carolina, she was sexually harassed by her enslaver. When he threatened
to sell her children if she did not submit to his desire, she hid in a tiny
crawl space under the roof of her grandmother's house, so low she could not
stand up in it.
After staying there for seven years, she finally managed to
escape to the free North, where she was reunited with her children Joseph and
Louisa Matilda and her brother John S. Jacobs. She found work as a nanny and
got into contact with abolitionist and feminist reformers.
Even in New York,
her freedom was in danger until her employer was able to pay off her legal
owner.
During and immediately after the Civil War,
she went to the Union-occupied parts of the South together with her daughter,
organizing help and founding two schools for fugitive and freed slaves.
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