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Harriet Jacobs (1813 or 1815 – 1897) was an African-American writer who was born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina. During her teenage years, seeking protection from sexual harassment by her enslaver James Norcom, she began a relationship with the white lawyer Samuel Sawyer, who became the father of her children Joseph and Louisa Matilda. When Norcom threatened to sell her children if she did not submit to his desire, Jacobs escaped and hid in a tiny crawl space under the roof of her grandmother's house, so low that she could not stand up in it. After staying there for seven years, she finally managed to escape to the free North, where she was reunited with her children. In 1861, she published an autobiography titled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl under the pseudonym Linda Brent, a book which was later described by her biographer Jean Fagan Yellin as an "American classic". This portrait of Jacobs, her only known formal photograph, was taken in 1894 by Gilbert Studios in Washington, D.C.Photograph credit: Gilbert Studios; restored by Adam Cuerden