A01=Erica Armstrong Dunbar
African American history
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
American history
americas first family
Author_Erica Armstrong Dunbar
automatic-update
Black history
black studies
black voices
Black women in history
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BG
Category=DNB
Category=HBJK
Category=HBLL
Category=JBSL
Category=JFSL
Category=NHK
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
freedom
George Washington
George Washington slavery
Gilded Age HBO
jullian fellowes
Language_English
Martha Washington
Massachusetts
national book award finalist
New England
Ona Judge
Ona Judge biography
Ona Judge story
oppression
PA=Available
Philadelphia
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
race
Revolutionary era
Revolutionary period
Rhode Island
slavery
slavery in early America
slavery in the founding era
slaves
softlaunch
US history
Washington D.C.
Washington family slavery
women's history
Product details
- ISBN 9781501126413
- Weight: 281g
- Dimensions: 140 x 213mm
- Publication Date: 03 Sep 2020
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful story about a daring woman of “extraordinary grit” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).
When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. As the President grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t abide: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire.
Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, she was denied freedom. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property.
“A crisp and compulsively readable feat of research and storytelling” (USA TODAY), historian and National Book Award finalist Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked everything to gain freedom from the famous founding father and most powerful man in the United States at the time.
When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. As the President grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t abide: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire.
Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, she was denied freedom. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property.
“A crisp and compulsively readable feat of research and storytelling” (USA TODAY), historian and National Book Award finalist Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked everything to gain freedom from the famous founding father and most powerful man in the United States at the time.
Erica Armstrong Dunbar is a historian and professor of African American studies at Emory University. Her first book was A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City. Her second book, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and a winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Award. She is also the author of She Came to Slay, an illustrated tribute to Harriet Tubman, and Susie King Taylor and is the coexecutive producer of the HBO series The Gilded Age.
