Rev. Henry P Jacobs, M.D. (July 8, 1825 - ??), was born into slavery near Asheville, Alabama, under the name Samuel Hawkins.  On July 24, 1856, Jacobs, his wife, their three children, and two of his brothers stole a buggy and and horse from the plantation and fled, heading for Canada under papers he had forged.

Ordained as a Baptist preacher in 1858, the family settled in Ypsilanti, where Jacobs and his wife Louisa worked as janitors at the Michigan Normal School (now Eastern Michigan University).  Jacobs was a founder and served as the first pastor of Ypsilanti's historic Second Baptist Church. He also hosted an 1863 meeting of black Michigan leaders that called for equal rights under the state's law, and started the city's first school for black children in protest of the existing schools' policies requiring them to sit at the back of classrooms.

After the Civil War, he returned south to found Jackson State University and Natchez Seminary in Mississippi, was elected to that state's post-war Constitutional Convention and to three terms in the Mississippi State Senate, and served as President of the Missionary Baptist Convention of Mississippi, traveling around the state to develop congregations. Jacobs returned frequently to Ypsilanti to speak and to visit friends and family. In 1890, Jacobs was conferred a Medical Doctorate by a Louisville, Kentucky medical college open to African-Americans.

In 2015, a group of high school students from Ypsilanti Community Schools honored Jacobs with a mural on the side of Currie's barbershop on Harriet Street.

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