That would be 61,320 hours in the attic, give or take a Leap Year or two.
Seven years.
That's how long Harriet Jacobs spent as a "runaway" in her mother's attic to escape her sexually-abusive master and the other evils of slavery.
Jacobs knew her master would come after her, and she had children who were living with her mother, who was a free woman living only a short distance away from her master's plantation, that she was sure she'd never see again if she did actually get North. She knew she'd never be able to come back and see them, so she watched them from the roof of her mother's house for seven years while her master, and the patrollers, assumed she'd escaped to freedom. They repeatedly came to her mother's house looking for new information of Jacobs' whereabouts, assuming Jacobs would sneak back to see her mother and children.
Her first-person narrative about her experiences as a free hostage, and about the atrocities to which she was objected and to which she saw others objected, will keep you turning the pages of her autobiography, which was originally written in 1861 under a pen name to protect her family.
Read about Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl : restored version complete and unabridged.
The Kindle version of this book is free, click here for more information.
Other free books for the Kindle:
- Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky Containing an Account of His Three Escapes, in 1839, 1846, and 1848 by Jacob D. Green
- Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
- The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 A History of the Education of the Colored People of theUnited States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War by Carter G. Woodson
- The Anti-Slavery Alphabet (author unknown)
- Black Rebellion Five Slave Revolts by Thomas Wentworth Higginson
- Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days by Annie L. Burton
- The Confessions of Nat Turner by Nat Turner
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
- Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
Comments
*shaking my head* This is terrible. It still blows my mind that we have slaveowners on our money but that's completely looked over because it was legal. However, the same people who want to brush slavery under the rug were cheering their butts off when O.J. Simpson was put in prison. Why? He should've been for allegedly killing his wife in the first trial. The thing that bothers me is while people feel it's justified for some to be punished for the crime, other parts of history like this story are brushed under the rug in history books and literature.
Thanks, again, for your comments.
One of the purposes of this column is to keep historical events like the one featured in this article from being overlooked, so keep reading. There are more to come!
I appreciate your support.
That is a great book and Jacobs' story is amazing!! What still gets me (besides her living in the amount of space equivalent to a small container) is her honesty about becoming pregnant (as if she were to blame). Gets me every time I think about it.
Thanks for reading the article, and commenting, Acquanda. It's a very powerful story. I can't even imagine living in an attic for seven years. My goodness. And then to be living over your family members; watching your children growing up without you but with you. The duality of it is just profound.
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