7 Quotes & Sayings By Harriet Jacobs

Harriet Jacobs was born in North Carolina in 1813, the daughter of a slave named James. She was sold at age 6 to a slave trader, who after several moves took her to Maryland. There she was sold to Alexander and Harriet Jacobs, who were advocates for the education of their slaves. As an adult, she escaped slavery with the assistance of her white sister. Jacobs became the first African-American woman to publish an autobiography while living in New York City in 1857 Read more

Jacobs left New York to return home to North Carolina; there she wrote her autobiography while working as a seamstress. It was not published until 1913 after Jacobs' death, when it was edited by her sister Angelina Grimke and published under the title "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (Harriet Jacobs Papers). Jacobs died in Philadelphia in 1885, aged 65.

There is something akin to freedom in having a lover...
1
There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment Harriet Jacobs
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Many of the slaves believe such stories, and think it is not worth while to exchange slavery for such a hard kind of freedom. It is difficult to persuade such that freedom could make them useful men, and enable them to protect their wives and children. If those heathen in our Christian land had as much teaching as some Hindoos, they would think otherwise. They would know that liberty is more valuable than life. They would begin to understand their own capabilities, and exert themselves to become men and women. Harriet Jacobs
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But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns. She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies. Harriet Jacobs
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Ah, if he had ever been a slave he would have known how difficult it was to trust white men. Harriet Jacobs
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Ah, if he had ever been a slave he would have known how difficult it was to trust a white man. Harriet Jacobs
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The brightest skies are always foreshadowed by dark clouds Harriet Jacobs