Harriet Jacobs
1813-1897 19th century
To pray from a crawl space, and to refuse to lie about what one has lived.
Who was Harriet Jacobs?
Born a slave in North Carolina, she was taught to read by her mistress and harassed by her master from adolescence. To stay near her children without yielding to him, she hid for seven years in a crawl space under her grandmother's roof, where she could not stand upright. She reached the North in 1842 and in 1861 published, under an assumed name, the first slave narrative written by a woman, then opened schools for the freed.
In their own words
There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south.
I knelt by the graves of my parents, and thanked God, as I had often done before, that they had not lived to witness my trials.
The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.
Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage.