Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Education and Abolition

Some thi rty years before Harriet Ann Jacobs opened the Jacobs Free School in Alexand ria , Vi rginia in January 1 864, one of her fi rst students was her fifty-th ree year-old uncle, Fred . The seventeen -year-old Harriet appreciated her uncle 's "most earnest desi re to learn to read " and promised to teach h im . 1 As slaves , both teacher and student risked the punishment of "thi rty n ine lashes on [the] bare back" as wel l as imprisonment for violating North Carolina 's anti literacy laws targeting African Americans . 2 Nevertheless they agreed to meet three times a week in a "quiet nook" where she instructed h im in secret . 3 Whi le the primary goa l for h im was to read the Bible, this moment in Jacobs ' slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl revealed her early commitment to African American literacy and education as wel l as her rejection of the laws of American slavery. I n that moment, the vocations of education and abolition took root for Harriet Jacobs .