Harriet Jacobs
Edenton, Chowan County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Harriet Jacobs C. 1813 1897. Fugitive slave, writer, & abolitionist. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) depicts her early life. Lived in Edenton.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
Born into slavery around 1813 in Edenton, Harriet Jacobs endured years of abuse before escaping north, where she became a writer and abolitionist. Her 1861 memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, gave a rare first-person account of enslavement from a woman's point of view and became one of the era's most important slave narratives. She drew on her early life in this Chowan County town for the book.
Why it matters
Jacobs turned her own bondage into testimony that helped a nation confront the reality of slavery, and her voice endures as a landmark of both African American and women's literature.
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