From the ages of 12 to about 22, Harriet Jacobs lived under the watch of her enslaver, a wealthy physician named James Norcom Sr. During that decade, as Jacobs grew from a child to a young woman, Norcom psychologically and physically terrorized her.
Once, when she was a teenager, he threw her down the stairs of his Edenton, North Carolina house. He swore it would never happen again. But as Jacobs later wrote, “I knew that he would forget his promise.”
