History, like people, can be complicated and uncomfortable just as it can be inspiring and uplifting. Ona Judge learned that as “good” as her life appeared to be in the Washington household, it wasn’t her life as long as she was their “property.” Ona Judge gave up everything to live as a free person. Can you imagine what it would be like to make the choices Ona made so that she could live as a free person? Would you make the same choice?

The question really is, what would you give up for your values. Most of us, it seems, are more apt to NOT do anything that might risk what we have. Things would have to be really bad for us to step away from the life we know. But how bad does it have to be? It can be difficult for us, today, in modern America, to understand how bad it was for Ona Judge to do what she did. 

Most of her life all Ona Judge knew was that black people lived as slaves to rich white people and the best that they could hope for was to have a slave owner who didn’t beat them too much or separate them from their families when they got married or had children. All she had known was that she was not entitled to having any compensation or actual money from her own work. If she was allowed to keep any money it was a “kindness” from her master. She wasn’t allowed to set her own daily schedule or even decide on the kind of work that she would do for her life. That was decided for her. And if she crossed anyone in authority she could be sent out to work the fields or beaten or just sent away. She was raised to believe that, not being born “purely” white meant that she wasn’t fully human or as capable as any fully white person. And that if she were to leave her owner that she would be committing a crime against him by taking from him something that was valued as his property. 

Then she met people who did not feel like this was the way it was supposed to be, that ones ethnic heritage had nothing to do with ones humanity or rights or potential. And hearing that she was going to be traded away, she made the choice to leave everything behind, risk severe punishment if she was caught, and left the world that she knew. Then she spent many years being pursued by agents of a man who had fought for liberty against the tyranny of English rule, but couldn’t see the tyranny in his own household. 

  • ona judge - washington's runaway slave
    ona judge – washington’s runaway slave
  • ona judge - washington's runaway slave
    ona judge – washington’s runaway slave
  • ona judge - washington's runaway slave
    ona judge – washington’s runaway slave

I am fortunate that I have been born and lived at a time where I was given the freedom to choose the path of my own life and that I was not directly limited in the choices that I made, based on my ethnic heritage. But I have to recognize that my experience is not universally true for everyone. Right now people are trying to make it so that women cannot choose the welfare of their own bodies if they become pregnant. Right now there are people who want to greatly restrict who can come to this country seeking the freedom and opportunities that brought all of our families here. They want to restrict them because they do not come from “desirable places.” 

I cannot fathom what Ona Judge experienced or the thousands who toiled under those life threatening circumstances. But still to this day, because my good fortune is not the experience of everyone or rather even if it ever were to be true, the story of Ona Judge must be remembered. The story of the young woman who choose her own freedom over a life in a fine house as property, who was pursued by the general who had just defeated the British military in order to give freedom to his fellow white male landowners, but couldn’t see that owning another human being was wrong. 

“History, like people, can be complicated and uncomfortable just as it can be inspiring and uplifting,” Joe Bustillos

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