Harriet Jacobs

Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in 1813 in Edenton, North Carolina. Her first enslaver taught her to read and write, but after that woman's death Harriet was passed to a family whose head, a doctor, abused her and threatened to sell her children. In 1835 she ran away and hid in a tiny crawl space under the roof of her grandmother's house, too low to stand up in, where she stayed for about seven years, watching her children through a small hole. In 1842 she escaped by boat to the North and was later reunited with her son and daughter in New York, where she worked as a nanny for the family of the writer Nathaniel Parker Willis. Even there she was in danger of capture until her employer bought her freedom in 1852. With encouragement from abolitionists, she wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the name Linda Brent. During and after the Civil War she and her daughter worked to aid formerly enslaved people and founded schools for them. She died in Washington, D.C., in 1897.

Harriet Jacobs is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: A Christian whose faith was tested by ministers who defended slavery; she later found new access to her faith. Source: Wikipedia