Harriet Davis (American Girl)

Harriet Davis is Addy Walker's classmate. Harriet is a free black girl; unlike Addy and Sarah, she has been free her entire life. She comes from a very well to do family and has enough money so that Harriet owns many different fancy dresses and can go out for ice cream on a whim. She has the kind of life Addy pictured having in freedom. Harriet is named after Harriet Tubman and knows her own birthday. She has both parents and an unnamed uncle, but no siblings are named. Harriet is smug, braggy, proud, and boastful; she knows that many of her classmates are poor and uneducated former enslaved people, but rather than sympathizing with their past she looks down on them for not being as well off or educated as she is. Harriet will follow authority figures if expected to or confronted, she is still quite defiant and often acts as if she's the smartest or best person and only her ideas are valid. She does seem to become less haughty and more kind as the series progresses, but is still something of a braggart and an antagonist to Addy. Originally, Harriet was illustrated as a very pale skinned girl by Melodye Rosales; when the books were reillustrated by Dahl Taylor, she was given a darker skin tone that no longer reflected the colorism.