10/22/2026
Enslaved woman Ona Judge made a daring escape from George and Martha Washington’s household in 1796. Now, nearly 250 years later, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar is telling her story.
Dunbar’s book, “Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge,” was selected as the Common Experience reading for the incoming Duke Undergraduate Class of 2030. On September 25, 2026, the Duke and Durham community had the opportunity to hear from Dunbar at two events — one at the Nasher Museum of Art, hosted by the Duke Office of Undergrad Ed, and one at Durham County Library, hosted by the Kenan Institute for Ethics as part of its event series, The Ethics of Now.
As part of We the People: A Duke and Durham Initiative, an ongoing commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, these events offered attendees the chance to consider the nation’s evolving identity through the lens of its early history. At the Nasher event, Dunbar pointed out that Ona Judge is a key person to consider when we are considering what liberty means— both then and now.
Similarly, in her opening comments at the Durham County Main Library, Ethics of Now host and Duke history professor Adriane Lentz-Smith said that hundreds of years after Ona Judge escaped from slavery, “we are still reckoning with what it means to be free.”
Dunbar’s work reminds us that the stories we tell about the past remain unfinished, and that every generation engages with history in different ways in order to better understand the present.
Part of commemoration is aspirational, Dunbar said. In other words, the stories we tell reflect the nation we want to become.
Duke Arts
