Many accounts about Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, mention in passing that she taught during the Civil War in Washington. Actually, it was across the Potomac in Alexandria. In any event, her experiences get short shrift. Read below to learn about the school situation she encountered and what she accomplished as a school leader. I’ve also included quite a few in-the-moment excerpts from/about what became known as the Jacobs School.

The Local Situation

From 1846 through 1861, it was illegal to educate Black children in Alexandria. Before that, several schools had operated out of people’s houses and at least one designated school building. After the War of 1812, a school organized by an “association of free colored people” had an enrollment of 300; another began in the 1830s by a former student of that school named Alfred Parry.

What happened in 1846? Alexandria, which had been part of the District of Columbia from 1801, was “retroceded” back to Virginia. Virginia’s laws that prohibited Black education prevailed. Some children were taught informally and a few lived with family members in Washington. (They would have been forbidden to go back and forth between the two to attend school.)

Then, 1861. The Union Army occupied Alexandria, not wanting this town just across the Potomac River from Washington to remain in Confederate hands. As a result, Blacks reclaimed their right to an education. They could congregate in groups, previously forbidden.

In addition to education for local Black children, a whole new population wanted schooling—the hundreds, then thousands of people coming into Alexandria to escape slavery (an estimated 8,000 in Alexandria alone). Classrooms operated in churches, schoolhouses abandoned by white Alexandrians, and private homes. Most of the missionary-run schools were free because they had outside support; the local, Black efforts charged a fee because they did not have other resources.

Harriet Jacobs’s Vision: 1863-1864

In January 1863, Harriet Jacobs came to Alexandria as a relief agent for the New York Yearly Meeting of Friends, a Quaker group. Like others who traveled south, she had a broad but vaguely defined charge from her sponsors to help out as she could.

She distributed donated clothing and bedding, advocated for better housing and health care, and generally served as a sympathetic supporter of people who had gone through trauma and were living on the edge. (I describe her work with fellow relief agent Julia Wilbur in my book A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time.)

A Black community had formed north of the main part of town called Grantville (named for the General and also for the first resident, a man named Peter Grant) and were building a gathering place. Missionary societies eyed it. But Jacobs had another idea: a free school run by Blacks. She traveled to New York and Boston to raise money, and to bring her daughter Louisa and a family friend, another young woman named Virginia Lawton, back with her to teach. She also organized several fairs to sell clothing, knick-knacks and the like, a common fundraising strategy of the day.

Julia Wilbur mentioned the plan in an October 2, 1863, letter:

Mrs. Jacobs is going to New York in a few days….She will try to get money to build a school house here & have a free school. She intends to have her daughter come here & teach.

On November 20, 1863, again according to Wilbur,

Mrs. Jacobs & her daughter Louisa, an elegant girl, came this P.M. She has also brought another colored girl for a teacher….I do not think there will be any chance to teach unless they can get a room for themselves….

Construction moved along, she reported on December 27, 1863, albeit with a money snag:

The school house in Grantville is not done yet, but the Colored people, as I understand, have control of it now and Dr. Bigelow [a white physician/missionary] has nothing to do with it. The 1st Monday after New Year, Louisa & Virginia intend to take their school there, but it will not be quite done. The work has stopped for want of funds.

Julia then asked her sponsors, the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, if she could contribute “$25 or $30" to help complete construction. She also asked if she could sell some of the clothing and other items donated, although she seems to offer up “some of the things for sale that came in the trunk from R. [Rochester]—They are not very salable articles but I might dispose of them for a little & it wd. help some.” These expenses are reflected in the Society’s 1864 annual report, so she succeeded.

Then came the issue of control:

I am quite as anxious as Mrs. J. to have the Colored folks control this house & the school. They have paid most of the money so far, but it comes hard now.

Harriet Jacobs prevailed, as she recounts below, and the school opened on January, 11, 1864, initially with 80 students and Louisa and Virginia as the teacher.

Two months later, on March 10, 1864, she wrote to Hannah Stevenson, an officer with the New England Freedmen’s Aid Society:

…the week before the School room was finished, I called on one of the colored Trustees, stated the object of bringing the young ladies [Louisa and Virginia] to Alexandria. He said he would be proud to have the ladies teach in their school but the white people had made all the arrangements without consulting them. The next morning I was invited to meet with Trustees at their evening meeting. I extended the invitation to all the parties that were contending for the school. I wanted them to know all that might be said in relation to the teachers, and I wanted the colored men to learn the time had some when it was their privilege to have something to say….

When one of the white men who wanted control of the school rose to press his case,

A black man arose and said—the gentleman is out of order. [T]his meeting was called in honor of Miss Jacobs and the ladies.

To counter the fear that they could not hold a lease as Blacks, Harriet wrote:

I went with the trustees to the proper authorities, had their lease for the ground on which the building was erected secured to them for five years.

Unfortunately, the lease has not turned up in Alexandria records, nor is the precise location known beyond the intersection of “Pitt and Oronoco Streets.”

On Mach 26, 1863, Harriet and Louisa wrote a long letter to Lydia Maria Child (editor of Incidents) to describe conditions in Alexandria, including the school. As they knew would happen, Child had the letter published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard. They admired the spirit and skills of their students, but admitted that discipline of so many children could be…..challenging:

The task of regulating them is by no means an easy one; but we put heart, mind, and strength freely into the work, and only regret that have not more physical strength. Their ardent desire to learn is very encouraging and the improvement they make consoles us for many trials.

Louisa actually became a bit overwhelmed. In a later report to the New York Yearly Meeting of Friends, Harriet wrote that Louisa would need to take a break from teaching, and Louisa herself wrote about the difficulty in managing the large classes.

But looking back, shouldn’t she have cut herself some slack? A handful of teachers had as many as 200 students to occupy. They had very few books or other materials. And while Louisa at one point wrote, “I am inclined to believe their organization more restless than that of white children”—well, I don’t think a bunch of white kids would have settled down any easier under similar circumstances.

Several months later, on October 30, 1864, Massachusetts abolitionist Samuel May, Jr., wrote an account of his trip to Alexandria for the Standard. He noted, “we were fortunate in having as our guide MRS. HARRIET JACOBS, in whom the freed people have found a most intelligent, judicious and invaluable friend.” He described his visits to homes and L’Ouverture Hospital, the hospital for U.S. Colored Troops. And, of course, Harriet must have taken him to the Jacobs School as part of the “tour.” While praising it, he takes a patronizing view of the enterprise. Excerpts from a much longer piece:

Not content with building houses for themselves, the colored people of Alexandria have built a school-house for their children, which for the present they also use for religious meetings. Upon this school-house they expended seven hundred dollars, saved from their earnings, and these people, be it remembered were (one or two exceptions) slaves till lately….They evidently realize that the superior knowledge and information of the master class was one of the strongest means of holding their slaves in bondage; they understand that their ignorance was their weakness, and they rejoice in the hope that their children are to be lifted out of it.

May recognized that the school held a special place in Harriet Jacobs’s heart.

In this school-house Mrs. J takes a very special satisfaction and she will watch the teaching and the order of it with as much intelligence as interest. Her field is an extremely important one, and we hope she may be fully sustained in it.

Keeping Things Going, then Winding Down: 1864 and 1865

The school continued to grow in both students and staff. Other schools were opening, and a little competition was taking place. An article in the Freedmen’s Record included an open letter she wrote about the school:

The school is making progress under the charge of their teachers. It is the largest, and I am anxious it shall be the best.

As a way to celebrate the school’s accomplishments and continue to build support for it, Harriet arranged for a photograph to be taken. The students and teachers are lined up in front of the building, staring dutifully at the camera. Prints circulated to prospective donors.

In the copy that is in the Robert Langmuir Collection at Emory University, some interesting annotations. Underneath the group, it reads:

Colored School at Alexandria Va. 1864, taught by Harriet Jacobs & daughter, agents of New York friends.

Further, under Harriet herself, a small “x” with the note “x H. Jacobs, an Ex Slave”

With no known portrait photograph of Harriet Jacobs as a young woman, this is one of the few glimpses we have of her in her prime.

Harriet and Louisa Jacobs stayed in Alexandria until July of 1865. (I’ll talk about what they did after that in a later post.) The school suffered storm damage around the same time that a general school reorganization under Freedmen’s Bureau auspices took place, and it merged with others.

It is not known which corner of the Pitt-Oronoco Street intersection the school stood. As you can see, there is no sign of it today.

Note on Sources:

The letters and reports from Julia Wilbur are in the papers of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society at the Clements Library, University of Michigan. As of 2020, they are available online.

The other letters sit in various archives but are compiled in the Harriet Jacobs Family Papers, Volume 2, edited by Jean Fagan Yellin.

A 19th-century summary of the schools for Black children: Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Condition and Improvement of Public Schools in the District of Columbia, “Colored Schools of Alexandria,” pp. 283-293.