Harriet Jacobs Term Papers

Labor was the mechanism through which many people resisted their status as slaves, pivoted into lives of freedom, and earned their means to survive. Although enslaved people eventually obtained freedom, many continued into free life working jobs with which they had become familiar during their time in bondage. However, for many former slaves, labor could only be found through working available tasks under poor conditions. For men and women, these tasks were widely separate, with men often providing labor as public manual laborers, and women restricted to more private, domestic affairs. Therefore, occupations of freed people were often a continuation of similar duties performed while enslaved. Furthermore, this labor was gendered depending on

Women often found work in private domestic settings once they were freed, where they had experience serving as mothers or housemakers during their time as slaves. This idea was explored in depth in the memoir of Harriet Jacobs, who served as a seamstress, housemaker, and mother, all during her time as a slave. As a slave, Harriet Jacobs began garnering experience in motherly roles as she “nursed two babies of [her] own…” and raised them throughout the entire beginning of her narrative (Jacobs 138). This previous experience gave Jacobs a significant advantage over other black laborers, since she could bypass the requirement of recommendations. The skill of wet-nursing was so important during Jacob’s life that any woman who could fulfill the role was accepted, despite inability to “obtain… certificates from the families…” (Jacobs 138) under which they’d served. This meant that that black women received less scrutiny while searching for work than contemporary men because there was a higher demand for their labor. Because of this, Jacobs- along with most freed women- were able to fulfill these motherly roles much more quickly than men could find manual

Frederick Douglass demonstrates this after his escape, as he attempts to continue work as a calker (building upon his time as an apprentice during slavery). Throughout a large portion of his time as a slave, Douglass apprenticed under a skilled shipbuilder “to learn how to calk” and continued a process of arduous labor which “was [his] school for eight months” (Douglass 55-56). Although Douglass practiced extensively to learn this skill, he was not guaranteed work by the time he escaped north. In fact, Douglass often competed with other white shipbuilders and prejudice against blacks, inhibiting his practice, and leading to a necessity to accept any available work. Because of his competition, Douglass often found opportunities for work extremely scarce, and after “finding [his] trade of no immediate benefit… [Douglass] prepared [himself] to do any kind of work…” he could find (Douglass 68-69). This reflects a wider narrative of freed black men, who also had to compete with white laborers in their respective fields. Many freedmen were subjected to the same frustration as Douglass because they often had to compete in more public fields than their female counterparts (who found work more readily). This demonstrates that black men, although as skilled as white workers, often had to accept lower wages or even labor in