Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin has been called by some, “the most important novel in American history.” Stowe’s novel and its abolitionist message helped create a movement in the North to push back against the institution of slavery. Inspired by the impact of Stowe’s fictional account of slavery, Harriet Jacobs published her slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Jacobs believed that her true account of slavery could be even more powerful than Stowe’s novel.  This lecture covers how these two brave and outspoken women changed the course of American history.