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The Veterans Club of PCCC

The Veterans Club of PCCC

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The Veterans Club of Passaic County Community College consisting of past and present students vetera

03/04/2026
11/12/2025

For seven years, Harriet Jacobs lived inside a crawlspace no larger than a coffin—nine feet long, seven feet wide, and only three feet high. She could not stand. She could barely move. Through tiny holes in the wood, she watched her children play below, close enough to hear their laughter but never close enough to touch them. She stayed hidden there to save them—to keep them from being sold away, to keep them from the man who owned her body and obsessed over her.

Born enslaved in North Carolina in 1813, Harriet’s childhood was brief, her innocence fragile. When her enslaver died, she was passed like furniture to a new household, one ruled by Dr. James Norcom, who began pursuing her when she was only fifteen. There were no laws to protect her, no mercy in a system built to crush women like her. So Harriet did what women have always done when the world offered no good choices—she used strategy. She entered a relationship with a white lawyer, Samuel Sawyer, hoping his power might shield her from Norcom’s violence. But safety was an illusion, and when Norcom’s threats closed in, Harriet vanished.

She didn’t run far. She hid in her grandmother’s attic, her body folding into that suffocating space for seven years. Seven years of silence. Seven years of aching muscles, rotting wood, and unbearable heat. Seven years of listening to her children ask where their mother had gone, believing she was free somewhere in the North, never knowing she was right above them. Every day she endured that darkness was an act of defiance. Every breath she drew was resistance.

When she finally escaped in 1842, Harriet did something even braver—she told the truth. Under the name Linda Brent, she wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the first autobiography to expose the sexual violence enslaved women faced. She refused to let shame or silence bury her story. She demanded that women—enslaved or free—be seen in their full, complicated humanity.

Harriet Jacobs turned suffering into testimony. Her courage wasn’t loud or glorious; it was the quiet strength of a woman refusing to give up her children, her dignity, or her voice. She spent seven years in darkness so her children could live in light—and so we could remember what love and endurance can do when the world offers no way out.

11/12/2025

Today, we honor the fierce and fearless women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black, all-woman battalion to serve overseas during World War II.

Known as the “Six Triple Eight,” these 855 women faced racism, sexism, and the unimaginable pressures of war, yet they delivered. Literally. They processed millions of pieces of backlogged mail to keep soldiers connected to their families and hope alive on the front lines.

They served with grace, grit, and excellence at a time when their country didn’t fully see them, but we see them now. We honor their courage, their sisterhood, and their legacy that continues to inspire generations of Black women leading and breaking barriers today.

“No mail, low morale” wasn’t just a slogan, it was their mission. And they carried it out with unmatched pride.

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Paterson

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+13474235860

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Paterson, NJ
07501