INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLA

Harriet Jacobs wrote the story of her life of enslavement, mistreatment, confinement and eventual freedom shortly before the civil war. Incident in the life of slave girl was intended to be read as a slave narrative and, as such to provide a historical documentation of what the reality of slavery entailed, at least for a young woman. It is also a political manifesto in that it argues that the realities of slavery were not much …

…rides in segregated trains and boats, stays in segregated hotels, and describes racist work rules and work places. As a member of this reconstituted family, she was not put into a "Jim Crow Car,.....neither was I invited to ride through the streets on top of trunks in a truck; but every where I found the same manifestations of the cruel prejudice, which so discourages the feelings, and represses the energies of the colored people"