Ray Anthony Shepard
Author of Now or Never!: Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry's War to End Slavery
Works by Ray Anthony Shepard
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Liked the content- but the text is so simplistic. I couldn't get over the phrase "why you run Ona?" Is this supposed to reflect a dialect? Really want to like this because it has great history, but in the end, I have to say it's not my favorite. The story is really good and the history is really good, but is the book really good? Also don' love the illustrations.KC
"Why you run away, Ona Judge?"
Through poetic text, Shepard shows that "good" treatment is not nearly as good as freedom. The art is finely detailed and realistic.
Back matter: author's note, timeline, bibliography, author's acknowledgments, artist's acknowledgments, a note on style ("rhetorical questions as a poetic structure"), places to visit
Through poetic text, Shepard shows that "good" treatment is not nearly as good as freedom. The art is finely detailed and realistic.
Back matter: author's note, timeline, bibliography, author's acknowledgments, artist's acknowledgments, a note on style ("rhetorical questions as a poetic structure"), places to visit
This story, well-known to scholars of George Washington, is about one of his house slaves, Ona Judge, acquired by the Washingtons when she was ten years old.
Ona, who was a mulatto (described as “almost white” according to the Mount Vernon website), grew up to become the personal seamstress and servant to Martha Washington. She traveled with the family from Mt. Vernon in Virginia to the temporary capital of Philadelphia when George Washington was elected as President of the United States. She was among the slaves Washington secretly rotated out of the latter city in order to evade the 1780 Pennsylvania emancipation law. Washington asked his secretary to see to this process “under pretext that may deceive both them and the Public.” While in Philadelphia, however, Ona had made contacts with free blacks and Quaker abolitionists, and saw an opportunity to live her own life. In May, 1796, as the Washingtons were preparing to return with their slaves to Mount Vernon in Virginia for the summer, Ona took the opportunity to escape. It was important timing for her since Martha was about make Ona a “wedding gift” as a slave for her granddaughter, Eliza, who was known to have a fierce temper.
Ona fled to New Hampshire, choosing the dangerous status of fugitive runaway rather than remaining enslaved. She had a dream, the author writes, of doing what she wanted and having a family without having to worry about her children being enslaved and/or taken from her and sold elsewhere.
The Washingtons were incensed and offered a reward for her recapture. In a letter the President fumed:
". . . however well disposed I might be to a gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of People (if the latter was in itself practicable at this moment) it would neither be politic or just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference; and thereby discontent before hand the minds of all her fellow-servants who by their steady attachments are far more deserving than herself of favor.”
Washington, ever conscious of money, also saw his slaves as valuable assets, and resented the loss of her “value.” As the anonymous narrator points out to Ona: “You were his money walking out the door.”
The author explains at the end of the book that he decided to tell Ona’s story using rhetorical questions as a poetic structure. The book begins with the refrain: “Ona Judge, Ona Judge / Why you run away / Ona Judge?” Each subsequent double page spread then relates aspects of her life as a slave and ends with the sarcastic or ironic question, “Why you run Ona Judge?” Why, the narrator wonders sarcastically, wouldn’t a girl wouldn’t want to be someone’s pet; someone’s property to do with as the owner pleased? In this way the author also depicts the reaction of whites in general and the Washingtons in particular to escapees from slavery: why would anyone want to leave such a wonderful [sic] arrangement? How ungrateful!
The book, designed for an audience of ages 4 and over, concludes with an Author’s Note, Timeline, and Bibliography.
Lovely paintings enhanced by fabric collage by Keith Mallett show period costumes and furnishings.
Evaluation: The particular narrative technique chosen is an excellent way to show the radically different perceptions by both sides of the slavery question. Adults can explore not only these issues with children, but the use of irony and sarcasm to further an argument.… (more)
Ona, who was a mulatto (described as “almost white” according to the Mount Vernon website), grew up to become the personal seamstress and servant to Martha Washington. She traveled with the family from Mt. Vernon in Virginia to the temporary capital of Philadelphia when George Washington was elected as President of the United States. She was among the slaves Washington secretly rotated out of the latter city in order to evade the 1780 Pennsylvania emancipation law. Washington asked his secretary to see to this process “under pretext that may deceive both them and the Public.” While in Philadelphia, however, Ona had made contacts with free blacks and Quaker abolitionists, and saw an opportunity to live her own life. In May, 1796, as the Washingtons were preparing to return with their slaves to Mount Vernon in Virginia for the summer, Ona took the opportunity to escape. It was important timing for her since Martha was about make Ona a “wedding gift” as a slave for her granddaughter, Eliza, who was known to have a fierce temper.
Ona fled to New Hampshire, choosing the dangerous status of fugitive runaway rather than remaining enslaved. She had a dream, the author writes, of doing what she wanted and having a family without having to worry about her children being enslaved and/or taken from her and sold elsewhere.
The Washingtons were incensed and offered a reward for her recapture. In a letter the President fumed:
". . . however well disposed I might be to a gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of People (if the latter was in itself practicable at this moment) it would neither be politic or just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference; and thereby discontent before hand the minds of all her fellow-servants who by their steady attachments are far more deserving than herself of favor.”
Washington, ever conscious of money, also saw his slaves as valuable assets, and resented the loss of her “value.” As the anonymous narrator points out to Ona: “You were his money walking out the door.”
The author explains at the end of the book that he decided to tell Ona’s story using rhetorical questions as a poetic structure. The book begins with the refrain: “Ona Judge, Ona Judge / Why you run away / Ona Judge?” Each subsequent double page spread then relates aspects of her life as a slave and ends with the sarcastic or ironic question, “Why you run Ona Judge?” Why, the narrator wonders sarcastically, wouldn’t a girl wouldn’t want to be someone’s pet; someone’s property to do with as the owner pleased? In this way the author also depicts the reaction of whites in general and the Washingtons in particular to escapees from slavery: why would anyone want to leave such a wonderful [sic] arrangement? How ungrateful!
The book, designed for an audience of ages 4 and over, concludes with an Author’s Note, Timeline, and Bibliography.
Lovely paintings enhanced by fabric collage by Keith Mallett show period costumes and furnishings.
Evaluation: The particular narrative technique chosen is an excellent way to show the radically different perceptions by both sides of the slavery question. Adults can explore not only these issues with children, but the use of irony and sarcasm to further an argument.… (more)
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- 4
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- Rating
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- ISBNs
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and their work fighting for racial justice. With illustrations that bring to life the figures and the times they lived in, it's a
compelling work that includes extensive back matter.