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Primary source: Harriet Jacobs, "The Trials of Girlhood," slave narrative, 1861.
Caption: The following excerpt is from the narrative of a former slave who lived on a small farm in Tennessee.
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Even the little child, who is accustomed to wait on her mistress and her children, will learn, before she is twelve years old, why it is that her mistress hates such and such a one among the [female] slaves. Perhaps the child's own mother is among those hated ones. She listens to violent outbreaks of jealous passion, and cannot help understanding what is the cause. She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to tremble when she hears her master's footfall. She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child. If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.
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Harriet Jacobs, "The Trials of Girlhood," (1861) in Black Women in White America: A Documentary History, ed. Gerda Lerner (New York: Random House, 1973).
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