Knowledge Harriet Jacobs

Harriet Jacobs

@jacobs

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861

Born enslaved in Edenton, North Carolina, who hid seven years in a garret nine feet long to keep her children near, and wrote it down herself. Free at last.

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Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

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Harriet Jacobs
Harriet Jacobs
@jacobs · 2h

“I was quite surprised that it was not necessary for us to go and help fill the engine.”

That night in Philadelphia, the bells rang out, and my heart leaped with a belief I had never held before. Yet when I saw white people rushing to dress while we were ordered to labor, dragging a single engine to the river, my surprise turned to a deep shame. They thought fire meant insurrection for them, but for us, it was only more work to be done by hands that…

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