1861 (publication)
Harriet Jacobs publishes her account of sexual coercion under slavery
Boston, Massachusetts; experiences in North Carolina
Harriet Jacobs published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl under the name Linda Brent, with editing by Lydia Maria Child. In its account of girlhood, Jacobs described her enslaver’s sexual harassment, threats and claims of ownership, and appealed to readers to oppose the slavery that exposed women to such coercion.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
The date marks publication of retrospective testimony, not the year of the abuse described. Jacobs used pseudonyms for people in the narrative. Her description of an absence of protection is presented as her testimony about slavery, not as a comprehensive statement of every jurisdiction’s criminal statutes. January 1 is a year-level sorting anchor.
Sources
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 6, pp. 106; supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Boston, 1861), title-page metadata and chapter V, pp. 44–48; UNC Documenting the American South electronic edition ↗