The Freed Slave Who Came to Dinner: Lydia Maria Child and Harriet Jacobs
As told by Jane Sciacca

Lydia Maria Child, Wayland’s 19th century champion of anti-racism and women’s rights and the only Wayland woman who has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, will celebrate her 220th birthday very fittingly on February 11 during the commemoration of Black History Month. Her groundbreaking, An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans, written in 1833, addresses the abomination of slavery in the United States.

From her modest home on Old Sudbury Road, she would use her pen to present her unique perspective on the events that led to the Civil War, to the War itself, and to its aftermath. She wielded her pen as one might wield a sword to cut out all the prejudices that especially confronted slaves, people of color and women. While one could choose from many of her acts of courage as a Wayland resident, the following story will illustrate the character and perseverance of this heroic woman and the equally courageous woman she befriended, Harriet Jacobs.

Harriet Jacobs was born a slave in Edenton, NC in 1813. As a child, she lived with both her enslaved parents until the death of her mother when she was 11. A benevolent mistress taught her to read and write despite the fact that it was against the law. Her life then turned to the more familiar pattern of that of a young, female slave-sexual exploitation. Pursued relentlessly by her new master, she made a conscious decision to defy him, in so far as it was possible for an enslaved woman to control her own destiny, by taking a white lover with whom she had two children. Her ultimate goal never wavered- freedom for herself and her family. To this end, she spent almost seven years hiding in her grandmother’s three-foot high garret until she could escape to the North. She finally made it to the North in 1842, and in 1852, her employer was able to buy her freedom. In the North, she would be reunited with her children and her brother, John.

Although there had been other slave narratives, notably that of Frederick Douglass in 1845, and a best-selling novel of slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in 1852, Jacobs was urged by friends to tell her own unique story. After the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she offered the details of her life to its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, but Stowe did not take up the offer. Jacobs decided to write it herself. It had taken her a number of years of living amongst abolitionists in the North for Jacobs to even tell her story to a trusted friend, so ashamed was she of her sexual history. She feared that Victorian sensibilities would be repulsed by her affair with a white man and would stigmatize her children even though it saved her from a forced sexual liaison with her master. To protect herself and her family, she used the pseudonym of Linda Brent and renamed the real people in her narrative. After being turned down a number of times, she finally made contact with a Boston firm which insisted that she get Lydia Maria Child, known for her strong abolitionist writings, to write the preface. When they met in Boston, Child not only agreed to write the preface but to edit the book. As Child explains in the Preface, “I have not added anything to the incidents, or changed the import of her very pertinent remarks…I had no reason for changing her lively and dramatic way of telling her own story.” Jacobs’ trials were not over, however, as the publisher failed before the book was published and Jacobs and Child collaborated (Jacobs bought the stereotype plates and Child held the copyright to protect Jacob’s identity) in guiding Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to publication in January 1861, three months before the outbreak of the Civil War.

Jacob’s book was well-received in abolitionist circles where it was greeted by respect for the author and not by the contempt she feared. Child and Jacobs remained friends and exchanged letters. Jacobs is one of the few overnight visitors that Child entertained in her Wayland home. During the Civil War, Child sent copies of Incidents to Union soldiers to arouse their hatred of slavery. These two extraordinary women went through, as Child wrote, “fire and water to help give a blow to Slavery.” Their joint efforts resulted in a classic of slave narrative, one that still has something to offer the world of today.