Erica Armstrong Dunbar > Quotes

“Both Lear and Washington held fast to paternalistic assumptions about African slavery, believing that enslaved men and women were better off with a generous owner than emancipated and living independent lives. Decades later, Southerners would justify the institution of slavery with descriptions of the supposed benefits that came with enslavement. According to many Southerners, slaves were better cared for, better fed, sheltered, and treated almost as though they were members of the family. Northern emancipation left thousands of ex-slaves without assistance, and Southerners charged that free blacks were living and dying in the cold alleyways of the urban North. Many believed Northern freedom to be a far less humane existence, one that left black men and women to die in the streets from exposure and starvation. But”
― Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge

“Very few eighteenth-century slaves have shared their stories about the institution and experience of slavery. The violence required to feed the system of human bondage often made enslaved men and women want to forget their pasts, not recollect them. For fugitives, like Ona Judge, secrecy was a necessity. Enslaved men and women on the run often kept their pasts hidden, even from the people they loved the most: their spouses and children. Sometimes, the nightmare of human bondage, the murder, rape, dismemberment, and constant degradation, was simply too terrible to speak of. But it was the threat of capture and re-enslavement that kept closed the mouths of those who managed to beat the odds and successfully escape. Afraid of being returned to her owners, Judge lived a shadowy life that was isolated and clandestine. For almost fifty years, the fugitive slave woman kept to herself, building a family and a new life upon the quicksand of her legal enslavement. She lived most of her time as a fugitive in Greenland, New Hampshire, a tiny community just outside the city of Portsmouth. At”
― Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge

“Worse yet, human nature was allowed no outlet in the motional life of the enslaved. There was no acceptable place for the range of human emotions. If you were angry, you had to swallow your rage. If you were afraid, you had to pretend as if you were calm. If your mother and brother had died a month apart, you had to go to work without tears, without a break, without comfort.”
― Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington's Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away; Young Readers Edition

“Ironically, slavery's burdens - all that that she suffered while working with different yet demanding families - turned Harriet into a warrior, a warrior who was ready to slay the dragon of human bondage.”
― Erica Armstrong Dunbar, She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman

“The business of slavery received every new enslaved baby with open arms, no matter the circumstances of conception.”
― Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge

“As Burwell prattles on, Ona finds her resolve. When he finally finishes speaking, she looks him straight in the eyes. Her response is final, and fierce.

"I am free now and choose to remain so.”
― Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington's Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away; Young Readers Edition

“When asked if she was sorry to have left the Washingtons, particularly because her life had been so difficult and sorrow-filled since she'd escaped to New Hampshire, she replied with strength and the calm wisdom of a woman who'd had the courage to do what was morally right: "No, I am free, and have, I trust, been made a child of God by the means.”
― Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington's Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away; Young Readers Edition

“Concerned about his failing plantation, unhappy about a northern relocation, and uncertain about the fragile new nation, Washington left for New York, the seat of the nation’s capital, with a great deal on his mind. But he was not the only one with concerns about leaving Mount Vernon; there were others who would travel with the president and his family, people who had no choice in the matter. Seven slaves would accompany the Washingtons to New York, including a sixteen-year-old Ona Judge. The fear of the unknown, the separation from loved ones, and the forced relocation must have felt apocalyptic for the bondmen and bondwomen who would travel to New York. Not that the cares and concerns of Mount Vernon’s slaves entered into the mind of the new president.”
― Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge