Washington vs Jacobs: Censorship and Differing Narratives
While Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl are both autobiographies that talk about their experiences with slavery and the impact that slavery left behind on them, they differ in meaningful ways. Both Washington and Jacobs diminish their experiences with being a slave, but they also had very different experiences. Washington was not in slavery for much of his life, as the civil war freed him early on, while Jacobs was a slave in the south for many years, and when her book was published, slavery had yet to be abolished. Aside from the timeline differing, Harriet Jacobs experienced a much different treatment from her master on the account of her being a girl in slavery. Washington’s accounts do not discuss any sort of sexual interest or advances made by any of the white people on his plantation, while in Jacobs’ story, this plays a major role. Since the attention from her master led to her kids and eventual escape from s...