Harriet Jacobs - The Kansas City Repertory Theatre

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THE PLAY THE AUTHOR HARRIET ANN JACOBS, 1813–1897 Slave, freedom fighter, abolitionist, reformer and author, Harriet Ann Jacobs is best remembered today primarily for a single published work, her autobiographical Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Jacobs was born February 11, 1813, in the port town of Edenton, North Carolina to biracial parents, Elijah and Delilah Jacobs. The family also included her brother, John. Following the death of her mother, six-year-old Harriet was sent to live with Margaret Horniblow, her mother’s mistress, who welcomed the girl into the home and taught her to read and write. Just a few years later, when Harriet was twelve, Margaret died. Harriet had HARRIET JACOBS LEARNING GUIDE | 2010 hoped to be emancipated, but instead was bequeathed to the woman’s three year-old niece, Mary Matilda, the daughter of Dr. James Norcom. Moving with her brother into the Norcom household, Harriet began years of fending off the sexual advances of the doctor and the jealous tirades of his wife. As a young woman of sixteen, Jacobs fell in love with a free black carpenter, but Dr. Norcom refused to let them marry, preferring to pursue her for himself. Rebelling against the eventual certainty that she would be forced to submit to Norcom’s sexual demands, Jacobs encouraged a relationship with Samuel Treadwell Sawyer, a young, unmarried, white lawyer and future U.S. Congressman. Together, they had two children, a son, Joseph, born in 1829 and a daughter, Louisa Matilda, born in 1833. Angered by Jacobs’ continued rejection, Norcom turned down Sawyer’s requests to purchase Jacobs and their children and instead sent her to a plantation owned by his son. After learning that her children would also work there as plantation slaves, Jacobs planned her escape, thinking that if she left, her children would be allowed to remain with her grandmother and avoid the brutalities of slavery. Initially, her plan backfired and the children and her brother were jailed until Sawyer arranged to buy them and send the children to live with their greatgrandmother in Edenton. In 1835, knowing that she needed to escape but lacking the means to do so, Jacobs hid at first in a swamp, and then sought shelter in her grandmother’s home. In her tiny attic refuge that measured only nine feet by seven feet and was just three feet at the highest point, Jacobs suffered sensory deprivation and frostbite. But, through a tiny hole in the roof, she was able to watch and hear her children playing in the yard below. Kansas City Repertory Theatre: Harriet Jacobs | 6
THE PLAY THE AUTHOR - CONTINUED Mother and daughter were secretly and briefly reunited in 1840, and Louisa Matilda was eventually taken to her cousin’s home in Brooklyn. Freedom for Jacobs came on June 10, 1842, when she and her son Joseph boarded a ship that would take them to Philadelphia, and eventually to New York. Jacobs made a new life in New York, at first working as a nursemaid and then attending the Young Ladies Domestic Seminary School. By 1849, she had joined her brother in Rochester, where they established the Anti-Slavery Reading Room and became actively involved in the anti-slavery movement, meeting Quaker Amy Post and her husband Isaac, both staunch abolitionists, Frederick Douglass and other prominent figures of the day. Although she was now living and working in the North and openly involved in the abolitionist movement, liberty for Jacobs was still elusive. When the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was passed, Jacobs was forced to flee Rochester to avoid recapture by Norcom’s daughter, Mary Matilda, who wanted her returned. Finally, in 1852, her employer and anti-slavery sympathizer, Mrs. Cornelia Willis, contracted the Colonization Society to buy the freedom of Jacobs and her children. Her oppressors were paid $300, and, at last, Jacobs and her children were free. HARRIET JACOBS LEARNING GUIDE | 2010 Dr. James Norcom posted this reward for Harriet Jacobs after she ran away from his son’s plantation. Now legally a free woman, Jacobs was encouraged by Amy Post to tell her story and, in 1853, she began writing Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Early attempts to publish the book failed, but Jacobs persisted. With financial backing from friends, the book was printed in 1861, under the pseudonym Linda Brent. The British edition, The Deeper Wrong, was published the following year. Throughout the 1860s, Jacobs traveled extensively to speak out against slavery. Wherever she went, she used her influence to improve the lives of runaway slaves and poor free blacks, and she never relented in the battle to establish fair wages, land ownership and schools for blacks. Believing that education could provide a way out of poverty, Jacobs and her daughter Louisa opened the Jacobs Free School in Alexandria, Virginia, on January 11, 1864. Kansas City Repertory Theatre: Harriet Jacobs | 7
Page 1 and 2: ISSUE 09 STUDENT MATINEE SERIES LEA
Page 3 and 4: Photo: Michael McClure Dear Friends
Page 5: THE PLAY THE STORY Setting: A crawl
Page 9 and 10: THE AUTHOR HARRIET JACOBS -TIME LIN
Page 11 and 12: THE PLAY THE PLAYWRIGHT Lydia R. Di
Page 13 and 14: THE PRODUCTION NOTES FROM THE DIREC
Page 15 and 16: THE PRODUCTION SET DESIGN - CONTINU
Page 17 and 18: THE PRODUCTION DESIGN ELEMENTS COST
Page 19 and 20: THE PRODUCTION DESIGN ELEMENTS LIGH
Page 21 and 22: THE PRODUCTION SPOTLIGHT ON AN ACTO
Page 23 and 24: THE PRODUCTION SPOTLIGHT ON REP STA
Page 25 and 26: PRE OR POST-SHOW ACTIVITY HARRIET J
Page 27 and 28: PRE OR POST-SHOW ACTIVITY - CONTINU
Page 29 and 30: BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE PRE-SHOW ACT
Page 31 and 32: AFTER THE PERFORMANCE: REFLECT & CO
Page 37 and 38: STATE AND NATIONAL STANDARDS Harrie
Page 39 and 40: STUDENT MATINEE INFORMATION TIPS FO
Page 41 and 42: STUDENT MATINEE INFORMATION CONTINU
Page 43 and 44: EDUCATION AND OUTREACH—POST SHOW
Page 45 and 46: KANSAS CITY REPERTORY THEATRE 2010-
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