Harriet A. Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813–1897) was born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, to Elijah and Delilah Jacobs. During her early childhood, she lived with her parents and brother in a relatively stable home because her father was a skilled carpenter. After her mother died when Harriet was six, she lived with her mother's owner, Margaret Horniblow, who taught her to read, write, and sew. When Horniblow died in 1825, Harriet was inherited by the young Mary Matilda Norcom, placing her under the control of Dr. James Norcom. As a teenager, Harriet endured years of sexual harassment and abuse from Dr. Norcom. After he refused to allow her to marry a free Black man, she began a relationship with Samuel Tredwell Sawyer, with whom she had two children, Joseph and Louisa Matilda. Fearing her children would be raised as plantation slaves, Harriet escaped and spent nearly seven years hiding in a tiny attic above her grandmother's storeroom before fleeing to the North in 1842. In New York and Boston, Harriet reunited with her children and worked as a nursemaid while remaining at risk of being captured under the Fugitive Slave Law. In 1852, her employer, Cornelia Willis, legally purchased and freed her. Harriet became active in the abolitionist movement and, encouraged by fellow reformers, wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which she self-published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent. The memoir became one of the most important firsthand accounts of slavery, particularly from the perspective of an enslaved woman. During and after the Civil War, Harriet devoted herself to relief work, education, and assistance for formerly enslaved people in Washington, D.C., Savannah, and Edenton. She died in Washington, D.C., on March 7, 1897, and was buried beside her brother in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.