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1813-1897
Known primarily for her narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself, Harriet Jacobs was a reformer, Civil War and Reconstruction relief worker, and antislavery activist. In Incidents, Jacobs describes her life as Southern slave, her abuse by her master and involvement with another white man to escape the first, and the children born of that liaison. Also described is her 1835 runaway, her seven years in hiding in a tiny crawlspace in her grandmother's home, and her subsequent escape north to reunion with her children and freedom. During the war, Jacobs began a career working among black refugees. In 1863 she and her daughter moved to Alexandria, where they supplied emergency relief, organized primary medical care, and established the Jacobs Free School--black led and black taught--for the refugees. After the war they sailed to England and successfully raised money for a home for Savannah's black orphans and aged. Moving to Washington, D.C., she continued to work among the destitute freed people and her daughter worked in the newly established "colored schools" and, later, at Howard University. In 1896, Harriet Jacobs was present at the organizing meetings of the National Association of Colored Women.
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