The Soapbox View

Jean Fagan Yellin, Who Uncovered a Slavery Tale’s True Author, Dies at 92

Her research proved that a 19th-century book presumed to be a novel by a white woman was actually an autobiography by a formerly enslaved Black woman.Jean Yellin in the 1980s. She came across “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” while writing her dissertation and developed a hunch that the book was autobiographicalPace University Archives 

By Sam Roberts

July 28, 2023 Jean Fagan Yellin, a historian whose six years of sleuthing revealed that what had been presumed to be a 19th-century white author’s fictional account of a young woman’s life as a slave in the American South was, in fact, a rare autobiography written by a formerly enslaved woman, died on July 19 at her home in Sarasota, Fla. She was 92.  Her death was confirmed by her son, Michael Yellin. The author’s name was Harriet Jacobs. “There are only a couple of names that are commonly known of 19th-century women held in slavery — Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman,” Dr. Yellin said during a lecture at Harvard University in 2004, when she published a book about her findings, “Harriet Jacobs: A Life.”
“Both could not write, because enslaved people were subject to anti-literacy laws,” Dr. Yellin added. “Their stories, in their own pens, do not exist. Jacobs is it.”  Originally published in 1861, Harriet Jacobs’s book, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” vividly recounted her enslavement from her birth in North Carolina in 1813. She was taught to read and write by the benevolent mistress whose family owned her.“Though we were all slaves,” Ms. Jacobs wrote, “I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed that I was a piece of merchandise.”
    She recalled that when she was 12,     she fell into the hands of a sexually abusive plantation owner who, years later, would threaten to sell her children if she rebuffed his advances. Her children had been fathered by another white man, who ultimately freed them. She managed to escape, hiding in a three-foot-high crawl space in her free grandmother’s attic, where for seven years she read newspapers and the Bible. In 1842, she fled as a fugitive to New York. 
    While “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” was promoted as “Written by Herself,” it was written under a pseudonym, Linda Brent, and was widely credited to its editor, Lydia Maria Child, a journalist, abolitionist and advocate for women’s and Native American rights, who may be best remembered for writing the poem that begins, “Over the river and through the wood.”
    Dr. Yellin originally came across “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” while writing her dissertation on 19th-century American literature, and developed a hunch that the book was autobiographical, not fiction. 
A letter from Ms. Jacobs found in the archives of Smith College in Northampton, Mass., provided a crucial clue. The letter, which included the line “I am sitting under the old roof 12 feet from the spot where I suffered all the crushing weight of slavery,” mentioned the names of real people whom Dr. Yellin could match with the characters in “Incidents.”  In “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” originally published in 1861, Harriet Jacobs vividly recounted enslavement as well as her years of freedom.  Jean Fagan was born on Sept. 19, 1930, in East Lansing, Mich. Her father, Peter Fagan, the son of a Quaker and an Irish Catholic, was a Marxist journalist who, with his wife, Sarah (Robinson) Fagan, the daughter of Orthodox Jews and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan, published a weekly pro-labor newspaper.
    She received a bachelor’s degree from Roosevelt University in 1951 and a master’s and doctorate from the University of Illinois in 1963 and 1969. She began teaching at Pace University (known as Pace College at the time) in 1968 and was an emeritus professor of English there at her death. 
    She married Edward Yellin, a biomedical engineer, in 1948; he died in 2020. Together, they wrote “In Contempt: Defending Free Speech, Defeating HUAC” (2022), about Mr. Yellin’s refusal to testify in 1958 about his Communist Party membership before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was investigating Soviet subversion. 
    In addition to her son, Dr. Yellin is survived by a daughter, Lisa Yellin Tebo; four grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. Another son, Peter, died years earlier.
Dr. Yellin in 2005. She helped establish the Harriet Jacobs Papers Project, a collection of nearly a thousand documents.  Sam Roberts, an obituaries reporter, was previously The Times’s urban affairs correspondent and is the host of “The New York Times Close Up,” a weekly news and interview program on CUNY-TV. More about Sam Roberts  Ida B. Wells-Barnett 1862-1931 By Arlisha R. Norwood, NWHM Fellow | 2017
    Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence. As a skilled writer, Wells-Barnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South. 
    Ida Bell Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16th, 1862. She was born into slavery during the Civil War. Once the war ended Wells-Barnett’s parents became politically active in Reconstruction Era politics. Her parents instilled into her the importance of education. Wells-Barnett enrolled at Rust College but was expelled when she started a dispute with the university president. In 1878, Wells-Barnett went to visit her grandmother. While she was there Wells-Barnett was informed that a yellow fever epidemic had hit her hometown. The disease took both of Wells-Barnett’s parents and her infant brother. Left to raise her brothers and sister, she took a job as a teacher so that she could keep the family together. Eventually, Wells-Barnett moved her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee. There she continued to work as an educator.     In 1884, Wells-Barnett filed a lawsuit against a train car company in Memphis for unfair treatment. She had been thrown off a first-class train, despite having a ticket. Although she won the case on the local level, the ruling was eventually overturned in federal court. After the lynching of one of her friends, Wells-Barnett turned her attention to white mob violence. She became skeptical about the reasons black men were lynched and set out to investigate several cases. She published her findings in a pamphlet and wrote several columns in local newspapers. Her expose about an 1892 lynching enraged locals, who burned her press and drove her from Memphis. After a few months, the threats became so bad she was forced to move to Chicago, Illinois.     In 1893, Wells-Barnett, joined other African American leaders in calling for the boycott of the World’s Columbian Exposition. The boycotters accused the exposition committee of locking out African Americans and negatively portraying the black community. In 1895, Wells-Barnett married famed African American lawyer Ferdinand Barnett. Together, the couple had four children. Throughout her career Wells-Barnett, balanced motherhood with her activism.     Wells-Barnett traveled internationally, shedding light on lynching to foreign audiences. Abroad, she openly confronted white women in the suffrage movement who ignored lynching. Because of her stance, she was often ridiculed and ostracized by women’s suffrage organizations in the United States. Nevertheless, Wells-Barnett remained active the women’s rights movement. She was a founder of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club which was created to address issues dealing with civil rights and women’s suffrage. Although she was in Niagara Falls for the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), her name is not mentioned as an official founder. Late in her career Wells-Barnett focused on urban reform in the growing city of Chicago. She died on March 25th, 1931. QUEEN Josephine Baker 
    
Dr. Yellin’s biography of Ms. Jacobs delves into the accuracy of her account. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence. As a skilled writer, Wells-Barnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South. 
    Ida Bell Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16th, 1862. She was born into slavery during the Civil War. Once the war ended Wells-Barnett’s parents became politically active in Reconstruction Era politics. Her parents instilled into her the importance of education. Wells-Barnett enrolled at Rust College but was expelled when she started a dispute with the university president. In 1878, Wells-Barnett went to visit her grandmother. While she was there Wells-Barnett was informed that a yellow fever epidemic had hit her hometown. The disease took both of Wells-Barnett’s parents and her infant brother. Left to raise her brothers and sister, she took a job as a teacher so that she could keep the family together. Eventually, Wells-Barnett moved her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee. There she continued to work as an educator.     In 1884, Wells-Barnett filed a lawsuit against a train car company in Memphis for unfair treatment. She had been thrown off a first-class train, despite having a ticket. Although she won the case on the local level, the ruling was eventually overturned in federal court. After the lynching of one of her friends, Wells-Barnett turned her attention to white mob violence. She became skeptical about the reasons black men were lynched and set out to investigate several cases. She published her findings in a pamphlet and wrote several columns in local newspapers. Her expose about an 1892 lynching enraged locals, who burned her press and drove her from Memphis. After a few months, the threats became so bad she was forced to move to Chicago, Illinois. 
    In 1893, Wells-Barnett, joined other African American leaders in calling for the boycott of the World’s Columbian Exposition. The boycotters accused the exposition committee of locking out African Americans and negatively portraying the black community. In 1895, Wells-Barnett married famed African American lawyer Ferdinand Barnett. Together, the couple had four children. Throughout her career Wells-Barnett, balanced motherhood with her activism. 
    Wells-Barnett traveled internationally, shedding light on lynching to foreign audiences. Abroad, she openly confronted white women in the suffrage movement who ignored lynching. Because of her stance, she was often ridiculed and ostracized by women’s suffrage organizations in the United States. Nevertheless, Wells-Barnett remained active the women’s rights movement. She was a founder of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club which was created to address issues dealing with civil rights and women’s suffrage. Although she was in Niagara Falls for the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), her name is not mentioned as an official founder. Late in her career Wells-Barnett focused on urban reform in the growing city of Chicago. She died on March 25th, 1931.