HARRIET JACOBS: A LIFE by Jean Fagan Yellin

Yellin, Jean Fagan, Harriet Jacobs: A Life (Basic Civitis Books, New York, 2004).

Jacobs, Harriet, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House Publishing, Inc., New York, 2004). 

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave & Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Modern Library Mass Market Paperbacks, 2004).

(BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY)

Reviewed by Dorinda Kauzlarich-Rupe

During late January, 2013, as I was sorting though some old papers, I ran across a newspaper article about a new book on slavery. That article had been sitting in my "to be read" pile for 9 years, as I kept buying and reading other new books. Pretty ridiculous. It was time to read the book, or throw the article out. I really wanted to read it. Thus began a reading marathon during February, which totally coincidentally, is Black History month. I ended up reading three books, all related to slavery and in some way interconnected.

Yellin, a Professor Emerita at Pace University, spent 20 years researching the life of Harriet Jacobs. In the process, he investigated the various cultures within the U.S.A. she was a part of or interacted with, and the people she hated, feared, loved and, sometimes, was ignored by, during the different phases of her life. Included in the book are 101 pages of notes, some for each page in the story, from the Introduction to the Afterword, as w ell as 8 pages of Selected Biography.

Harriet Jacobs is the only female American slave known to have written and published an autobiography, Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl. Yellin embellishes the story using the results of her fantastic research, so the reader has much more detail about Jacobs' life as a slave. Jacobs was constantly looking for ways to run from the brutality of slavery. An astounding self-advocate during slavery, and later an advocate for those of her people still enslaved, Jacobs worked at times with blacks like Frederick Douglass and with elite white abolitionists in both the U.S. and England. Yellin also records Jacobs’ efforts during the Civil War to bring aid to those blacks fighting for the Union; her political fight for emancipation; her constant efforts to bring dignity to the freed slaves who flocked to the nation's capital with nothing but the rags on their back, and often ill and dying; her work in the South to bring some stability, rights, and opportunities to those of her people who remained in the South; building schools for black children; teaching in those schools; and organizing fund raisers and clothing drives for those she was helping in both the North and the South. She always emphasized that black people were equal to whites in all ways and could be contributing members of society if given the chance. She was well known and accepted as an advocate and helped many blacks to find positive roles and improve their lives. She also, as she aged, watched her country become less and less eager to help the blacks, as the white southerners demanded and won back land that had, shortly after the Civil War, been given to persons who had served as slaves on those lands. 

Interwoven with Jacobs' story of constant advocacy is the story of her family, which was extremely important to her. Family included her grandmother, brother, uncle, two mulatto children, and a half-brother, also mulatto.

Harriet Jacobs wrote her autobiography while she was a fugitive slave, living and hiding in the northern states, but on constant lookout for her master, Dr. James Norcom to come knocking on her door and to forcibly take her back to Edenton, NC. 

After reading the Yellin book, I debated with myself whether to read Jacobs' autobiography too. I am so glad that I did read it. Although Yellin quotes Jacobs at times in her book and tells much of her story, reading Jacobs’ story in her own words is definitely a very worthwhile experience. She wrote her story anonymously, for fear of jeopardizing her family even more than running would do. She also left out much of the most horrible aspects of the abuse by her master, for fear that the northern abolitionists, for whom she was writing the book, wouldn't be able to really believe that a slave owner would engage in such terrible acts.

I was able to get Jacobs' story in a book that also printed the original autobiography of Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.  It was interesting to read both of the autobiographies, noting the different ways the two of them were abused, partly, of course, because one was male and one female, but also just differences in the way their owners treated slaves. What struck me most was that they both had this very strong, intrinsic belief that they were valuable human beings with the same rights as any white man, any slave owner. They had to be true to themselves and, therefore, stood up and fought for their rights. When they finally escaped, Jacobs and Douglass worked together at times in their abolitionist efforts. When they published their autobiographies, there were the naysayers, who “knew” that no slave was ever treated in the manner recorded. They proclaimed these books to be fictional accounts, for surely no slave would be capable of writing such a book. However, both books were finally recognized as true accounts and accepted. Somehow eventually Jacobs' was again considered a fiction by someone else, possibly Julia May Child, one of the well-known abolitionists who had hired Jacobs and become her friend. It was Yellin, who, in her research, reconnected the book to Jacobs.