When Harriet Jacobs learned that President Lincoln was going to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, she wrote a friend: "Life has just begun, and I pray to God to spare all the dear good people. . . that have labored so faithfully to see the fruit of their labor gathered in."
Harriet Jacobs was born in Edenton, North Carolina, in 1813. She learned from her mistress to read and write, an activity that became illegal in North Carolina in 1830. According to Incidents, as a child she remained unaware of being a slave "till six years of happy childhood had passed away." The family, which included a brother, lived in a home behind the tavern owned by their mistress, Elizabeth Horniblow. Harriet's father, of mixed parentage like her mother, was a carpenter and was allowed to hire himself out. Life was comfortable. It chanced that a white unmarried gentleman had obtained some knowledge of the circumstances in which I was placed. He knew my grandmother and often spoke to me in the street. He became interested in me, and asked questions about my master, which I answered in part. He expressed a great deal of sympathy, and a wish to aid me. He constantly sought opportunities to see me, and wrote to me frequently. I was a poor slave girl, only fifteen years old. Jacobs acknowledged the tale would shock audiences, but attempted to justify her actions.
This book was important because as I said earlier not only was she concerned about her life she was tired of being told what to do and she didn't want her children to grow up around that. When she stayed behind and allowed them to leave I felt amazed by that. Hariiet Jacobs was an amazing women because she told the story of every black African American man and female. I now see things that I didn't know before. Websites: http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/jacobs.html
http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2004-01/incidents.html
Image: http://cimages.swap.com/images/books/36/9780674035836.jpg
Media: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20EHtBdnaVE&feature=related
