Harriet Jacobe Life As A Slave Analysis

Life as a slave was very complex and varied greatly depending on who was their master and mistress. Slaves were forbidden to marry, own property, attend church services, and learn to read and write. Their lifestyles ranged from living a comfortable and almost normal life to continuously being mentally abused and physically beaten to the brink of death. A skilled slave and their family received better treatment and living conditions than other slaves. Harriet Jacob’s family was considered valuable and allowed to have more freedom than most slaves because their skills of building, sewing and cooking brought in more wealth for their master. The loyalty and dedication of several generations of her family toward providing their master with …show more content…
As she got older she was heavily sought after by the doctor. He tormented her using obscene language and crude sexual advances. It caused her much mental stress but she refused to surrender to him. In an unsuccessful attempt to gain her freedom and control over the unwanted advances, Harriet had two children from another white man. She thought she could outwit her master into selling her. Determined to protect her children from his threats of being separated and sold into slavery, Harriet planned her escaped and ran away but soon returned because of her great love for her two children. To ensure their freedom and evade her return to the Doctor, she hid in a rafter of her grandmother’s house for seven years, making sure no one saw her, not even her children, just so that she could watch her children grow up. Once the children were removed from her grandmother’s home, Harriet went North and never returned because the Doctor still would not give her the freedom she longed …show more content…
They were not tortured or beaten like a slave, but encountered many rejections such as not being allowed to eat at, sleep in, or go into the front of any facility that was occupied by whites. Those who were sharecroppers were able to have a family and live in their own house, but the crops they harvested were unfairly divided between them and the whites. Harriet and many were able to have enough money to provide them with proper food and clothing, as well as get some basic education, but it took the whole family working very hard. In New York, she found work as a nurse for an abolitionist family that helped hide her from fugitive slave hunters that were seeking to return her to the South. With both her children living in the North it was just a relief for Harriet to know she did not have to worry about them being mentally tortured or the family being separated or sold. These small freedoms made up for the rejections and services that were still refused to them because they were black. White slave children who were fathered by the master and sent north were allowed freedom until someone found out they were black and then their businesses or jobs were taken away from them. African Americans were servants before the Civil War and were still servants after the Civil War, with low paying jobs. They