In the absence of historical documentation of Ona’s most intimate experiences, Dunbar carefully reconstructs the things Ona might have been thinking, feeling, and enduring by using what records do exist from the time period. Because Ona, as a slave, was never taught to read or write, no record of her feelings or experiences exist in her own words apart from a pair of interviews she gave to two American newspapers toward the end of her life. Born into slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon plantation-but technically owned by Washington’s wife, Martha Custis Washington-Ona was pledged to the first lady and eventually came to serve as a handmaiden of sorts to Martha. Never Caught is a historical text which centers the story of Ona Judge Staines. Dunbar has also been a contributor to The Nation, Time, The New York Times, and The Philadelphia Enquirer.
Dunbar is the author of She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, which was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for nonfiction and A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City. Dunbar is also the National Director of the Association of Black Women Historians and previously served as the Inaugural Director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Dunbar’s research and scholarship has, in her own words, focused primarily on “the lives of women of African descent who called America their home during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” With special interests in urban history, Philadelphia history, and emancipation studies, Dunbar is the current Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University in New Jersey, a post she has held since 2017. After earning a BA from UPenn in history and Afro-American Studies, she went on to receive her MA and PhD from Columbia University. She was drawn to true stories, and when she enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania, decided to turn her childhood passion into a course of study. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Erica Armstrong Dunbar spent the early years of her education at a Philadelphia Quaker school reading deeply for hours on end.
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