Within These Walls: Harriet Jacobs’s Quest for Freedom

“Within These Walls: Harriet Jacobs’s Quest for Freedom” is a mobile history installation centered on Harriet Ann Jacobs, a formerly enslaved woman, abolitionist and author of “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” one of the most significant autobiographies in American literature. Featuring a life-size replica of the garret where Jacobs hid for seven years, the project invites visitors to encounter the spatial and emotional dimensions of her experience as a fugitive slave. By translating scholarship on Jacobs into an accessible, immersive learning experience, “Within These Walls” aims to expand public understanding of slavery’s lived realities while highlighting enslaved women’s contributions to the destruction of slavery and the making of American freedom.