First Step Toward Freedom: Women in Contraband Camps In and Around the District of Columbia During the Civil War
This paper was also presented at the National Conference of Undergraduate Research 2012 (NCUR) in Ogden, Utah.
Original version is available from the publisher at:http://www.ncurproceedings.org/ojs/index.php/NCUR2012
Click here to see the full text in Student Scholarship and here to see the PowerPoint presentation based on this paper.
Description
A white Quaker abolitionist woman from Rochester, New York, and an escaped female slave who lived in an attic for years to avoid capture, were not likely to become friends during the Civil War. Racial inequality was just as rampant in the North as slavery was in the South. However, these two women, Julia Wilbur and Harriet Jacobs, befriended one another in Alexandria, Virginia where they both volunteered to work with “contrabands-of-war”. More commonly known as fugitive slaves, these refugees needed shelter, medicine, food, clothes, and many other necessities of life as they continued toward true freedom. Julia and Harriet were allies who dedicated their lives to providing donated necessities, advocacy, schooling and hope for a brighter future. Through personal, intimate diaries and correspondence spanning over fifty years, the story of these two women; their friendship, hardships, successes, acquaintances and overall feistiness in the face of danger, moral inequality and established institutions is woven together in a unique, inspiring, unpublished story.
First Step Toward Freedom: Women in Contraband Camps In and Around the District of Columbia During the Civil War
Breidenbaugh Hall 209
A white Quaker abolitionist woman from Rochester, New York, and an escaped female slave who lived in an attic for years to avoid capture, were not likely to become friends during the Civil War. Racial inequality was just as rampant in the North as slavery was in the South. However, these two women, Julia Wilbur and Harriet Jacobs, befriended one another in Alexandria, Virginia where they both volunteered to work with “contrabands-of-war”. More commonly known as fugitive slaves, these refugees needed shelter, medicine, food, clothes, and many other necessities of life as they continued toward true freedom. Julia and Harriet were allies who dedicated their lives to providing donated necessities, advocacy, schooling and hope for a brighter future. Through personal, intimate diaries and correspondence spanning over fifty years, the story of these two women; their friendship, hardships, successes, acquaintances and overall feistiness in the face of danger, moral inequality and established institutions is woven together in a unique, inspiring, unpublished story.