Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave

Noted historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar earned her BA in history and Afro-American studies at Penn and earned her MA and PhD at Columbia. She is currently the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers. Her scholarship focuses on “uncomfortable concepts of slavery, racial injustice, and gender inequality,” where she “marvel[s] at the incredible triumph of survival and the beautiful history of resistance” (Dunbar, Erica Armstrong. “About.” Author website). Professor Dunbar is also the national director of the Association of Black Women Historians and continuously advances Black women’s history in the larger American historical conversation. She specifically wrote Never Caught because the narrative of “a woman who found the courage to defy the President of the United States” fascinated her. Specifically, Ona Judge had “the wit to find allies, to escape, to out-negotiate, to run, and to survive” (Kendi, Ibram X. “Never Caught: A New Book on George Washington’s Pursuit of His Runaway Slave.” Black Perspectives, African American Intellectual History Society, 8 Feb. 2017). In this way, she humanizes a woman in history who represents a population that has historically been underexamined. Dunbar notes: