Presenter of
the National Book Awards
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Presenter of
the National Book Awards
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Erica Armstrong Dunbar is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University. She is the author of A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City and Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, a Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and a winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. More about this author >
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A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful narrative of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington’s runaway slave who risked everything to escape the nation’s capital and reach freedom.
In her narrative about Ona Judge’s escape from the household of George Washington only to be ruthlessly, if futilely, pursued by the father of our country, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar tells us more than the story of our nation’s first president and his attitude toward an exceptional Black bondswoman. Never Caught also illumines a history of liberty-loving Black communities in a country founded on the twin bedrock of slavery and freedom.
