哈丽特·雅各布斯

哈丽特·雅各布斯 （1813年或1815年 – 1897年3月7日）是一位非裔美国废奴主义者和作家。

她生于一个黑奴家庭，而且曾受到奴隶主的性骚扰。奴隶主向哈丽特·雅各布斯表示如果她不服从，他就会把她的孩子卖掉。后来哈丽特·雅各布斯躲在祖母房子屋顶下的一个狭小的空间里。在那里待了七年之后，她逃到美国北部。后来她成为一位保姆，并与废奴主义者和女权主义者取得联系。

南北战争期间和刚结束时，她与女儿一起前往联邦占领下的美利坚联盟国部分地区，并为获得自由的奴隶建立了两所学校。

Harriet Jacobs (1813 or 1815 – March 7, 1897) was an enslaved African-American abolitionist and 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 City, her freedom was in danger until her employer was able to pay off her legal owner.

During and immediately after the American Civil War, she travelled to Union-occupied parts of the Confederate South together with her daughter, organizing help and founding two schools for fugitive and freed slaves.

Biography

Family and name

Harriet Jacobs was born in 1813 in Edenton, North Carolina, to Delilah Horniblow, enslaved by the Horniblow family who owned a local tavern. Under the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, both Harriet and her brother John were enslaved at birth by the tavern keeper's family, as a mother's status was passed to her children. Still, according to the same principle, mother and children should have been free, because Molly Horniblow, Delilah's mother, had been freed by her white father, who also was her owner. But she had been kidnapped, and had no chance for legal protection because of her dark skin. Harriet and John's father was Elijah Knox, also enslaved, but enjoying some privileges due to his skill as an expert carpenter. He died in 1826.

While Harriet's mother and grandmother were known by their owner's family name of Horniblow, Harriet used the opportunity of the baptism of her children to register Jacobs as their family name. She and her brother John also used that name after having escaped from slavery. The baptism was conducted without the knowledge of Harriet's master, Norcom. Harriet was convinced that her father should have been called Jacobs because his father was Henry Jacobs, a free white man. After Harriet's mother died, her father married a free African American. The only child from that marriage, Harriet's half brother, was called Elijah after his father and always used Knox as his family name, which was the name of his father's enslaver.

Early life in slavery

When Jacobs was six years old, her mother died. She then lived with her owner, a daughter of the deceased tavern keeper, who taught her not only to sew, but also to read and write. Very few slaves were literate, although it was only in 1830 that North Carolina explicitly outlawed teaching slaves to read or write. Although Harriet's brother John succeeded in teaching himself to read, he still was not able to write when he escaped from slavery as a young adult.

In 1825, the owner of Harriet and John Jacobs died. She willed Harriet to her three-year-old niece Mary Matilda Norcom. Mary Matilda's father, the physician Dr. James Norcom (son-in-law of the deceased tavern keeper), became her de facto master. Most of the property, including her brother John, was inherited by the tavern keeper's widow. Dr. Norcom hired John, and the Jacobs siblings lived together in his household.