Harriet Jacobs

Born into slavery around 1813 in Edenton, North Carolina, Harriet Jacobs endured abuse from her enslaver, Dr. James Norcom, and, to resist his control, entered a relationship with a local attorney with whom she had two children. In 1835, rather than be moved to a plantation, she fled and hid for nearly seven years in a cramped attic crawlspace at her free grandmother's home in Edenton, watching her children through a peephole without revealing herself.

In 1842 she finally escaped by boat to New York, and over the following years moved between New York and Boston to evade recapture, at one point leaving her son in her brother's care for safety. She eventually settled in Boston, where the family of abolitionist Nathaniel Parker Willis, for whom she worked as a nursemaid, purchased and freed her in 1852. Encouraged by fellow anti-slavery reformer Amy Post, Jacobs began writing her life story, which was published in 1861 as Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, under the pseudonym Linda Brent. During the Civil War she lived in Washington, D.C., assisting formerly enslaved people and nursing Black troops, and after the war she and her daughter did relief and educational work in Savannah and Edenton.

Key contributions

• Escaped slavery in 1842 after nearly seven years in hiding to protect her children from being sold.
• Authored Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), a landmark firsthand account of enslavement from a woman's perspective.
• Provided wartime relief and nursing support to formerly enslaved people and Black troops in Washington, D.C.
• Established relief and educational work for freedpeople in Savannah after the war.

Context

For decades, some historians doubted that Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was a true first-person account rather than fiction; scholar Jean Fagan Yellin's 1987 research confirmed the people, places, and events Jacobs described matched the historical record. Jacobs wrote at a time when slave narratives by men were far more common in print, making her detailed account of a woman's experience of enslavement especially rare.

In their spirit: Endure in silence as long as it takes, then tell the whole truth once you're free to.

About this set

Jacobs's card is one of six in Set 1B — Freedom's First Draft, part of the Lineage: Origin Fire digital postcard collection. Freedom's First Draft gathers women who wrote, testified, and organized the first records of their own freedom.

Shop the Freedom's First Draft set or get the Complete Collection (all 12 cards).

Note: sources differ on Jacobs's exact birth year, giving either 1813 or 1815.

Sources: National Park Service — Site of Harriet Jacobs' Charter Street Home; North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.