“Before us lay a city of strangers. We looked at each other, and the eyes of both were moistened with tears. We had escaped slavery, and we supposed ourselves to be safe from the hunters. But we were alone in the world, and we had left dear ties behind us; ties cruelly sundered by the demon Slavery” (Jacobs 125).
Even though I knew, from previous historical lessons on slavery in the United States, that fugitive slaves met a great deal of racism and conflict when they escaped to the North, I nevertheless was still surprised by the amount of prejudice Harriet Jacobs suffered after she though those terrible years were behind her. I suppose I was most surprised by the fact that, according to Jacobs’s testimonial, there were not stronger laws in place protected fugitive slaves from being returned to their masters. Furthermore, the Fugitive Slave Law, which was deemed constitutional for about nine years, destroyed the image of the North as a safe haven for runaway slaves. Even after the law had been struck down, however, I was still surprised by the amount of freelance slave hunters that were still operating throughout the Union. Of course, that fact alone is most likely the reason Harriet Jacobs had to use the pseudonym “Linda Brent.” While the sense of urgency within the text may be partially lost to modern readers, Jacobs’s apprehension in telling her life story is apparent throughout perhaps because she is aware that she is taking a great risk in revealing how she escaped slavery in the South. Not only could she be taken back to Dr. Flint and seriously punished but she could other get those who helped her in trouble as well.
When thinking about how Harriet Jacobs’s story relates or contrasts to modern commentaries on slavery in the U.S., I came to an essay by Dinesh D’Souza. D’Souza, who is an ultra-right wing writer and speaker, in his essay “The End of Racism,” talks about how African-Americans suffer a great deal from the backlash that multiculturalism receives in American society. D’Souza goes on to argue that blacks actually became less safe when slavery was abolished. D’Souza also defends the right wing’s support of segregation because he sees that Jim Crow laws actually sought to protect black people and their dignity. Furthermore, D’Souza lashes out against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s belief (and, interestingly, a belief of Harriet’s as well) that people should be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character and calls it outdated and full of liberal cultural integration that is simply outdated for the 21st century. After I read D’Souza for the first time I felt an overwhelming sense of nausea and shame. I then recall laughing after I found out he was born in India. D’Souza, in my opinion, subconsciously conjures the slaveholders like Dr. and Mrs. Flint who, in an effort to get Harriet to return to their home, said how she would be treated as an equal. This “separate but equal” mentality (which, as no citizen of the United States should forget, was struck down in Brown v. Board of Education), seems almost appealing to everyone but slaves or anyone who has suffered the injustices from a racial majority. I think if D’Souza ever bothered to read Jacobs’s book and especially the above quote, he would have “sympathetically” shaken his head and lamented over how foolish she was. Yet Jacobs, importantly, attributes the breaking of familial ties not to her flight, but to the institution of slavery.
In a sense Jacobs’s, at least by the end of her book, never does attain the freedom that she so desperately desires. Her children, not to mention, even though they suffer less oppressed lives they are by no means able to mature and grow as free citizens. Yet without trying to fight the ignorant institution of slavery, Harriet and other would not have paved the way for future generations of African-Americans to fight for and gain even more of their entitled freedoms.
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