Thursday, March 28, 2024

EUR EXCLUSIVE: ‘Never Caught’ Author Erica Armstrong Dunbar Dishes On Book’s ‘Runaway’ Success

"'Runaway' Success: 'Never Caught' Author Erica Armstrong Dunbar Dishes On Book's Accolades, Sales, Craftsmanship, Themes - And An Upcoming Film! EURweb EXCLUSIVE!

*With “Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit Of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge” still making cash registers ring over a year after it’s release – and with a possible film adaptation on the horizon – the tome’s author, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, sat down with EURweb’s Jerome Maida for an exclusive interview about the book’s accolades, sales, craftsmanship, themes and ‘runaway’ success.

Get into part one the Q&A below.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar

EURweb: Hi. First of all – outstanding book. It’s truly amazing. I think this is a powerful story and that part of the reason it resonates for many is that you simply presented your facts in a narrative, while making it a story that flowed and that did not tell people how to think. Basically, you let the facts speak for themselves. How did you go about achieving that balance?

Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Well, first, thank you for the compliment, while describing the book as such. That was my intent. You know, as a historian, it’s my job to present facts…to be objective, to offer my version of truth to the reading public and to tell the story. (It’s also) to secure the archival documents that I used to write the story – that allowed me to do it. I think, in many ways, her story was so incredible and so engaging, that it made for the perfect opportunity to blend history with really good storytelling – and that’s what I attempted to do with “Never Caught”.

EURweb: Great. Now, how did you wind up with the idea for this book? What was the spark?

Erica Armstrong Dunbar: So, I was actually working on my first book and I was in the archives and I was looking at..hundreds of newspapers, just to get a feel for what everyday life in 18th century America – and specifically, Philadelphia – would have looked like. As I’m looking through old newspapers, I came across a runaway slave advertisement from the President’s house – and that really was the trigger for the eventual work and production of the book. I was shocked!  I was not only looking at a runaway slave advertisement, which was somewhat odd in late 18th century Philadelphia – to see people still advertising for enslaved men and women, given the fact that Philadelphia had already kind of moved, almost beyond slaveholding – but, of course, it was the fact that it was the President of the United States. It was the President’s household that was advertising for a runaway slave!

That grabbed my attention – and as I read the advertisement (which stated) “absconded from the household of the President of the United States” – that literally just stopped me! That made me literally sit even more still in my chair and I read on and (discovered) this woman was named Oney Judge. They called her Oney, O-N-E-Y, which I argue is the diminutive, like Timmy or Billy. So I call her Ona – which is the name she went by at the end of her life – as a marker of adult dignity.

But when I saw this name, I thought, “Who is this woman?” and “What happened to her?” and (other questions like) “Was she able to stay detached from the Washingtons? Did they find her? Did they see her? What was the story?”

So, it was literally that moment in the archives, reading through very old newspapers, that I was introduced to Ona. In those stacks and archives began the 9-year journey of researching and writing this book.

EURweb: Now, once you came up with the idea, how did you decide on presenting a narrative so that it’s thought-provoking, yet something the average person could enjoy and want to read?

Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it was a decision that I made – the more research that I did, the more I learned about – I made the decision that this was a book I..wanted to write that my academic peers would respect and use in their classrooms and acknowledge, but I wanted to rend it in a way that was appealing for a general audience.

That was my real desire – to make history accessible. I don’t believe that history needs to be kept just for those who are super educated and with privilege and access to college and graduate school. ( I believe) that we all have the right to know our history and I thought that if I presented it in a way that would be engaging for those who don’t have PhDs, for those who like to read and want to learn history. That (means) more to me than writing another book. It was a way for me to share Ona’s story and also to (share with) as many people as possible to know who this woman was!

(It’s a way) to understand the relationship between her and George and Martha Washington – and to understand what the error of the early republic, the founding of the nation, what that moment looked like through the eyes of an enslaved person. Ona’s story allowed me to do that and allowed me to tell a different story of the founding of the nation, not through the (typical) top-down story.

You know, there are many, many very well-written biographies about Founding Fathers. We didn’t, in my opinion, necessarily need another one of them. We needed a new way of looking at American history, through the eyes of a person who lived across the early nation – who lived in the South in Virginia, who was moved to New York and then Philadelphia, and then the Mid-Atlantic and then to New England, in New Hampshire. (I wanted to tell) HER story, her moving through the early nation, going through many experiences over many years (that) allowed her to live a different version of the story and (chronicling) that is what I wanted to do – and i wanted to write it in a way that, as I always say, “I wanted to write something that my peers would respect, but also a book that my aunt would read”.

EURweb: Right. Again, I think you’ve definitely succeeded. I’m sure you realize, as a historian, a lot of the problem with history is the way it is taught. Especially when I was growing up and the way it is today, most likely, is that it’s about names and dates and memorizing.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Exactly! (laughter)

EURweb: It’s boring (to do it that way) verses telling a story. This (“Never Caught”) is as exciting, in a way, as a movie or something that would be fictitious. I mean, you can make (history) LIVE, right?

Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Exactly!  

EURweb: You know? Then make people understand the importance of those names and dates.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Right!

EURweb: Rather than just having the kids’ eyes glaze over, because – okay, you know, Mount Vernon, 1842, whatever – you know, instead of just dating it, make it come alive.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Right! That was the goal.

EURweb: I definitely think this is a book that should be in classrooms. I mean, it may sound easy to say that, but it definitely should be. I think it’s that well done, that important and that accessible to people.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar:  Well, I wanted also to write it in a way that it would be acceptable (not only for) college classes, but also for some high schools to read the book. Because not only do they walk away with a kind of compelling biography of an enslaved woman, but they walk away also learning about the laws of the early nation – what it meant to live in New York versus New Hampshire versus Virginia. (Also), how difficult it was in those early years, not just for enslaved people – though clearly for enslaved people – but also for everyone (that was) trying to figure out what the United States of America was going to look like. To learn what it meant, what urban labor meant. Why was it different as an enslaved person, living in a city, versus in rural Mount Vernon? What does it mean to be a domestic slave? To do laundry in 18th-century New Hampshire?

EURweb: Right.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar: How difficult is that? You know? So I wanted people to walk away learning lots of different things, about different situations and people and I used Ona as a portal to view all of them.

EURweb: Okay, and if you just want to briefly touch on – that was something else about the book. I know it has to do with power and, you know, language is powerful. Why do you use the term enslaved? Versus calling them slaves? Why do you feel that’s a powerful term and important?

Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Yeah. In the beginning of the book, I explain that I prefer to use the term enslaved, because it reminds us – as opposed to just (using) slave all the time – because it reminds us that was an action placed upon people. Not necessarily an identity, like the word slave, what that has become – and I think it’s important, it’s a distinction, that needs to be made. Now, I do explain in the beginning of the book, that I say, “For the purpose of prose, for the purpose of writing and fluidity, that I moved it back and forth between those terms, slave and enslaved”. But I do think it’s important that people recognize the institution of slavery, clearly was placed upon a group of people, as opposed to, “That’s just who you are.” So that was the reason that I think, most scholars (and) most people now understand the difference and recognize it.

EURweb: Okay. Now can you talk briefly about the time, effort and other factors that went into researching this book? Because obviously, (it did). In the Afterword, you talk, as you’ve stated, about all the places you went to and visited. You state you actually visited Ona’s grave. Things like that. So, what was the research in a book like this? What did it entail, to make sure you got everything accurate and presented as realistically as possible?

Erica Armstrong Dunbar:  Yeah! It took me 9 years to research and write this book. In part (this was) because Ona spent half a century as a fugitive, and the thing that’s most important for fugitives is anonymity. So, if you don’t want to be found, it makes it more difficult for researchers to find you. That, in addition to the fact that she was a woman, and she was a black woman, those things often left – those circumstances often left – women and people of color unaccounted for in many records. Also, because Ona was not literate – at least not until the end of her life – she did not leave behind a written record of her life. Thank goodness she left behind two interviews at the end of her life, that give us – that serve as an important window into her experience.

But what that meant was that the research was long and laborious and as a scholar, it’s my responsibility to try and follow as many leads as I can, to figure out this woman’s life. At a certain point, you know, the archival access is limited. That’s where my expertise as a scholar who focuses on African-American Women’s history allowed me, at times, to speculate. I’m very, very clear in the book (about) when I was speculating – and that speculation always came from the experiences of other enslaved women that were fugitives that I’d studied in the past.

So, for example, I may not have a document that says, for example, Ona made striped bass with dinner, but I do know that striped bass was the preferred, most readily available fish in New Hampshire, in Portsmouth, and I know that other women prepared it – and I have recipes on how they prepared it. So, I’m therefore comfortable saying, “Perhaps Ona made striped bass for dinner or something like that.

I was fortunate in that I have the background. I’ve written – I wrote my first book about how black women became in the North.(I) have that background knowledge to be able to fill in gaps, when I didn’t have archival information that gave me exactly what I needed. So, the process took a very long time.

You have to be completely immersive, especially when you’re doing, you know, the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, I spent a lot of time kind of in between many different archival sites, from Virginia, up to New Hampshire and D.C. and Philadelphia and New York, just kind of trying to follow every lead I could about her.

Eventually, I came to a point where I said, “Okay, this is where I have her mapped”, understanding that history is something that moves and changes. Perhaps there will be some document that falls out of some older person’s trunk..that will give additional information about Ona – and perhaps it might even contradict something that’s speculation that I made. So, people ask me if I’m worried about that and my answer is always “NO!” I want as much information to fill in a story, as much as possible, and this is the work – this is the craft of a historian, that we work with the documents that we have, but we’re always hoping for additional information. So that we can tell the truth. We can get into business with truth-telling.

EURweb: Can you share how important you think it is for people to truly understand history?

Erica Armstrong Dunbar:  Yeah! You know, part of the reason I am a historian and write the history of black women in particular, is because I feel in order to understand our present, let alone figure out our future, (we need to) literally understand our past. I think that over the past 30-40 years, we historians have done a much better job of writing a more inclusive vision of American history.

EURweb: Can you elaborate on that a bit?

Erica Armstrong Dunbar: We find the South, during this period, moving toward an orbit in which slavery would become – or was already and would continue to be – the cornerstone of society – at the same moment in which (slavery) was being dismantled in the North.

So, this is also a story about how individual states in the North handled the dismantlement of slavery – and we see stark differences between a state like New York and Pennsylvania.

The book also allows us to see what black freedom looked like in the 18th century. It allows you to see what it meant to be a free black person – and to be a free black person, or to perhaps be a white Quaker, who understood, as I’ve said before. the moral bankruptcy behind slavery and the need to end it. Which shows how very difficult that struggle was to end slavery (and) that it was far from immediate and that even with slavery ended throughout the North, that it did not bring about the end of racial injustice or discrimination.

So, that’s one of the things that we see in “Never Caught”. Black men and women, who perhaps had never been enslaved, were still living with the vestiges of slavery around them – the racial injustice, their lack of citizenship, their inability to vote and their inability to be employed in certain occupations. But, this is what freedom looked like in the North.

So, it was my desire to expose what Northern freedom looked like and to also expose what Northern freedom looked like – and to also expose what Southern slavery looked like. Southern slavery – and the President of the United States.

So, it is important for us to know that George Washington, while he didn’t necessarily earn a reputation as one of the most violent slaveholders, he gave permission constantly for his estate manager and overseer to whip the enslaved men and women at Mount Vernon, to coax them when necessary, to skin their backs. He gave them permission for that. He ran this whole place. We have to reckon with that – as uncomfortable and as much of a disconnect as it is from the man who “could tell no lies” (and) supposedly wore wooden teeth.

Well, actually, he had no wooden teeth. Wooden teeth? If you go to Mount Vernon today, and you go to a wonderful exhibit on George Washington’s slavery background – and there’s his false teeth on display at Mount Vernon. If you read the language that describes the teeth, it tells you that many of them came from the mouths of enslaved people, who were alive! Who had their teeth pulled from their skulls in order to give the President dentures! Other teeth came from cows as well.

So, when we think about the distance between that myth of wooden teeth – and the reality of dentures made by the teeth of the enslaved, we understand that narrative, that story, must be corrected. It’s not accurate. It’s not true.

Check back soon for part 2 of our conversation with Erica Armstrong Dunbar.

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