The Amazing Ona Judge

Never Caught: The Story of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington’s Courageous Slave who Dared to Run Away (Young Reader’s Edition) By Erica Armstrong Dunbar & Kathleen Van Cleve

     Never Caught: The Story of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington’s Courageous Slave who Dared to Run Away is adapted for younger readers from Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. This entry is a discussion of the adapted version. I have not yet read the original version written for an adult audience.

     The full title conveys a beautiful synopsis of the book. Never Caught is the tale of Ona Judge’s escape from George and Martha Washington.

     The reader first meets Ona Judge serving Martha Washington. As readers learn about Ona, they also re-study events from the country’s early history, events such as the American Revolution, the nation under the Articles of Confederation, and the writing of the Constitution. Dunbar and Van Cleve never keep us far from the parallel narrative of Ona Judge, giving the reader insight into the lives of enslaved people. Dunbar and Van Cleve do a wonderful job of helping us experience American history from the vantage point of enslaved people, adding a new and long missing way to view and critique American history. This angle is just one of several factors that makes this book so important.

     When George becomes president, Martha must journey to New York City, America’s first capitol. The authors share Martha’s concerns and a sense of what the journey must have been like for her. In this part of the book, we also come to know Ona Judge better and understand her experiencing of the journey. The lens on American history widens.

     When the capitol moves to Philadelphia, Ona moves to the City of Brotherly Love to be with the Washingtons during George’s presidency and we are provided a glimpse into the free Black community of Philadelphia. We get to know Richard Allen, a man who had been enslaved and then went on to be one of Philadelphia’s prominent abolitionists.

     The story becomes energized as Dunbar and Van Cleve describe Ona’s escape from Philadelphia on a ship and her subsequent fight to stay free in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The reader learns much of Ona’s private life. She marries a sailor, Jack Staines. They have three children. Jack Staines dies in 1803 and Ona struggles, living a life of hard work and poverty, but a life of freedom.

     Dunbar and Van Cleve show great respect for their readers, sharing some sophisticated ideas. They help us understand the foundations of historical thinking, reminding the reader that historians use primary documents to construct their presentation. We are told about letters as a source for understanding George’s feelings at particular moments. The authors share the actual words and writing of George, Martha, and others and take us deeper into their thoughts. At the end of the book they present a newspaper article from a May 22, 1845 New Hampshire newspaper. The article is based on an actual interview with Ona. How exciting to come face-to-face with the actual words of Ona Judge.

     Dunbar and Van Cleeve go deeper into the nature of historical thinking. As I mentioned, the authors share traditional elements of American history, but Ona Judge’s life is the main story. The reader starts to see the perspectives left out of the traditional American narrative, generating more lenses with which to see the development of the country, and forcing us to ask why Ona Judge’s story was buried until now. This is a book that teaches us about the notion of multiple perspective. This readiness to confront readers with complicated ideas, including the way historians think and the notion of multiple perspective, elevates this book.

     As a former teacher, I see a rich classroom discussion growing from the ideas Dunbar and Van Cleve hand the reader. The book allows us to ask some critical questions about American history. One, of course, stands out: How does our view of the nation change when we see its history from the vantage of enslaved people? This push to inquire critically is one of the amazing and important elements of this book.

     Never Caught is narrative nonfiction grounded in plot, character, and setting. The book is what I would term a good read. Dunbar and Van Cleve have a way of bringing people to life, in particular Ona Judge and Martha and George Washington. Beyond just a good tale, Erica Armstrong Dunbar & Kathleen Van Cleve share an important narrative. The reading level is set at an upper elementary and middle-school aged level, but the sophistication of ideas and the compelling story will also draw in young adult and adult readers. I hope this book is widely read and actively discussed.

Young Betty Shabazz, A Powerful Model

Betty Before X by Ilyasah Shabazz, with Renee Watson, 2018, Square Fish, New York

      Before I read this book, I knew a lot about Malcolm X and little about Betty Shabazz. The phenomenon of women hidden behind their husbands is an old, unfortunate occurrence. I am grateful that Ilyasah Shabazz shares her mother with us and moves her out from behind the shadow of her father’s narrative. We get a generous look at the inner life of Betty Shabazz as a young girl during the years 1945-1948. The authors, Ms. Shabazz and her co-author Renée Watson, place Betty in the context of broader social events which adds a richness to the portrayal of that young life.   

     In describing Betty’s early years, Ms. Shabazz and Ms. Watson give us a portrait of a strong young girl, a girl who must make her way despite the difficulties of a sometimes troubled childhood. The authors convey Ms. Shabazz’s inner world as she confronts personal issues and as she experiences events from the world around her. I am glad this part of her story is out there and available for young people to see and to ponder. We get a sense of the struggles that Betty Shabazz must go through but, more importantly, we see her strength and her power as a young girl.

     The tale is told beautifully.

     In terms of that broader world, the authors tell us about the Housewives’ League, a real organization that once existed. The League sponsors a boycott of white businesses that did not hire blacks. The women who run the League proclaim, “Don’t buy where we can’t work.” We see how women in Betty’s Detroit community organize to support black-owned business. Betty becomes involved in the League.

      Betty and her best friend Suesetta go door-to-door, telling people about the  League. That part of the narrative brought to mind descriptions I have read of the great Ella Baker. She developed a unique organizing style. In the spirit of Mrs. Baker, Betty and Suesetta learn the importance of getting to know the people they canvas before making their pitch.

     Betty and Suesetta are picked to make a speech at the ceremony to honor Ms. Fannie Peck, the founder of Detroit’s Housewives’ League. Ms. Peck is a real person and she started the league in 1930 during the Great Depression. Ms. Peck wanted to help black businesses at a very difficult time. Before reading Betty Before X, I had never heard of Fannie Peck. Thank you Ilyasah Shabazz and Renée Watson for correcting that.

     There is so much to learn from this book; readers will find out about African-American life after WWII, about Detroit, about forms of activism. There is also much about the personal struggles a young African-American woman faced in post-WWII America and today, including questions like whether or not to lighten your skin or straighten your hair.

      So in addition to a wonderful coming-of-age story, we learn about the times in which Betty Shabazz grew up. A little history. But the presentation of Betty Shabazz as a young girl remains at the center of the book. That focus will draw young people in and then they will gather some important knowledge as they read.

      I do have one quibble. I’m uncertain as to why this book was called fiction. The book has strong biographical elements. I wish the authors had made clear how they fictionalized. There is much dialogue in the book and interior reflection. That would have to be constructed to some extent, but I wonder how closely the dialogue and interior monologue was based on some source, an interview or maybe a diary or even the memory of a conversation.

     In a closing section on Suesetta, Phyllis, and Kay, the authors explain that portraits of those friends “were inspired by the recollections of some of her adult friends as well as printed interviews” (237). What does “inspired” mean? That is a potent word. It implies to me that the authors started with concrete sources and then fictionalized to a large extent. Also, what is meant by “recollections?” Are they formal interviews? Informal conversation? And might the specific printed interviews be cited?

     As a social studies educator, I am concerned that students learn to think historically. In order to do that, to assess how truthful a piece of historical writing is, it’s important to know the source or sources used to present a portrait and also to know how aptly sources corroborate each other. Perhaps the authors could have added a brief section at the end explaining their historical method and their rationale for calling the book fiction.

     I want to conclude by again recommending this book. The wonderful writing, the richness of character, and the presentation of conflict will draw young people into an important story. Through that engagement they will encounter a smart, tough girl reflecting on her life and they will learn about historical events they are likely not to have encountered elsewhere. It is the sort of book we should be placing in the hands of middle-school kids so they can engage with important issues as well as discover the joys and the importance of reading. Actually, teens and adults too. I just have a place set aside in my heart for kids at that tender middle-school age. This is a special book, one that group deserves.

Facing Frederick-Tanya Bolden Gives Us Frederick Douglass

Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass, a Monumental American Man

 by Tonya Bolden (Harry N. Abrams, January 9, 2018)

     Young people need to know Frederick Douglass. In fact all of us do.[†]In her well-written biography of Frederick Douglass, Tonya Bolden gives us a strong sense of Douglass as a person and a clear message about his importance to the world.

     So here are two choices Ms. Bolden makes that I like. First of all she grounds the biography in photos. In fact she starts the entire book off with a discussion of the nineteenth century technology used for photography and Frederick’s appreciation of that technology. Douglass loved photography and so we have many photographic images of him. Ms. Bolden includes photos in the text. In Facing Fredrick we can literally see Douglass aging.

      I love the image she places at the end of the book. Frederick sits in his study, back to us. We see his old roll desk, his violin leaning on the right side of the desk, and one stack of books that goes to the ceiling. The books tower over the human figure. Douglass appears to be writing. We do not see his face, but we do see his mane of white hair. Douglass the intellectual and writer. I also love that powerful stare in the 1863 photo on p. 93. The posture and look speak to an individual of great power.

     The second choice. Bolden starts the book by dropping the needle on Douglass’ life at a well-chosen moment. He is about to deliver a first speech beyond his home of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in Nantucket, the speech that launches him into the world. In a short, bold sentence that is typical of her writing, Ms. Bolden suggests the power and significance of that talk: “With his entrancing baritone voice, he soared” (Bolden, p. 4). We are early introduced to Frederick Douglass’ career as an itinerant orator, the foundation for his activist life. And then Bolden quickly moves the needle back to present a sketch of Frederick’s New Bedford life, his struggles, and his first speaking out. That time travel gives us a view of Douglass as a person and we start to see why we should care so much about this man. To be clear, it is how Bolden moves us through time that I like. That shifting allows for an engaging narrative structure that Bolden makes easy to follow.

      Early on in the text we are introduced to Douglass’ language and the way he uses words. So he reads the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper. Frederick then proclaims, “My soul was set on fire.” He goes on, “Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds—its scathing denunciation of slaveholders—its faithful exposures of slavery...sent a thrill of joy throughout my soul, such as I had never felt before” (on page 3 and from p. 117 of his Narrative). Through those statements Douglass’ impassioned views on slavery are made clear early in the text. I love reading his words.

     And so from the start, Bolden smoothly introduces us to Frederick Douglass the writer. There are his words and there is his storytelling. Bolden conveys that latter ability through a discussion of his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

     And from hearing about the Narrative, we glean some sense of Frederick’s early life as a child and as a slave in Maryland. As part of that story, the reader discovers how a “Baltimore mistress” teaches Douglass to read and how “white pals” in the neighborhood continue his education. And then at thirteen Mr. Douglass comes upon the book The Columbian Orator from which he obtains his first lessons on speaking. Douglass is educated on the streets and, through his own initiative, he creates that life of the mind he lived.

     All of this and we have only gotten through chapter one.

     This is a beautiful way to lay out the life of Frederick Douglass, sharing early his gifts as a speaker and writer while integrating a discussion of his early life. Biography does not need to start, “And she was born.”

     In chapter two Ms. Bolden takes us through the publishing of Mr. Douglass’ first autobiography and then his tour of the British Isles where he becomes known internationally as a speaker, a writer, and an abolitionist. Frederick Douglass was something of a rock star, touring and performing through the speeches he gave while selling merch, his Narrative, along the way.

    And slowly we come to know Frederick Douglass as a person. In one brief paragraph about the international tour, we find out that he experiences “fits of melancholy.” He cures himself by buying a violin and playing a Scottish jig. As Douglass tells a friend in a letter, “They say music is good for insane people” (Bolden, 26-27; from Letter in Douglass Papers, 125).

     It is not until chapter three that we learn about his wife Anna, his children, and his escape from slavery. We also learn that Douglass felt troubled because of the time spent away from his family. Bolden mentions this, but she does not dwell on it. Bolden also does not linger on possible tensions in the marriage between Frederick and Anna. Instead, we get to see how Anna played an important role in Frederick’s life.

     As we are drawn into Douglass’ life, we are also made aware of what is happening throughout the country. We learn about some of those events one might study in a history class, the Compromise of 1850, John Brown, the abolition movement, and finally, the Civil War. Frequently in school these topics are taught as disparate facts. In the pages of this book, those topics take on meaning because we see them in the context of Frederick Douglass’ world.

     Bolden also tells us about Mr. Douglass’ involvement with the women’s movement. He attends the Seneca Falls meeting and even speaks, calling for the vote. Later she recounts Douglass’ sometimes bitter fight with members of the women’s movement over the Fifteenth Amendment. She shares the racist language Elizabeth Cady Stanton uses due to her anger over blacks gaining the right to vote first. If we want students to face reality and engage in critical discourse with the history they encounter, we need this dirty laundry. (We also need such honesty when we study the slave owners who helped found the country.)

      Two minor quibbles. I find the discussion of Frederick Douglass’ later years a bit disappointing. Becoming more establishment, obtaining government positions through his involvement with the Republican Party, Douglass shifts. What should we make of this? I am not certain.

     I like the use of quotes, but sometimes quotes that are bolded on pages do not go along with the text on the page. That is distracting.

     So as a former social studies teacher, I can’t help but think of using this book in a class. This is a book that would lend itself to critical discussion in a social studies classroom. Here is a great sentence that would invoke a rich conversation: “The man who as a boy once had a closet floor for a bed had an audience with—had been listened to by—the president of the United States—and in the White House!” (Bolden, 105) The sentence is a reference to a meeting Mr. Douglass had with President Lincoln where Douglass presented concerns about unequal treatment blacks experienced in the military.

     The readership for Facing Frederick is defined as grades 5-9. I am glad someone has written such a compelling book about Frederick Douglass for middle-level students. That age group, in particular, needs exposure to intellectuals, people who read, people who live by language, and people who generates ideas. I also like that students this age are introduced to an activist, especially one who takes what he thinks and puts those ideas into action. If the young see this behavior modeled by such a powerful figure, perhaps they will take that behavior into their own lives, including lessons about doing good in the world.

     Again, adults would also find richness in this biography.

     There is one more reason for young people to know Fredrick Douglass. He is a founder of this nation and we need to see him standing next to people like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, though Douglass himself might not be comfortable being so close to people who enslaved others. Jefferson’s hypocrisy left American democracy unfinished and tarnished. People like Frederick Douglass needed to re-define and re-shape our American democracy.

     Overall, this is a great book because it is about an important figure and Ms. Bolden leads us beautifully through the narrative. I found myself engaged in the story of Douglass’ life. So read Facing Frederick and learn about an amazing man.

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[†] (David Blight has written a magisterial biography of Douglass for adults. I am through the end of the Civil War in my reading. The reader comes to know Frederick Douglass through Blight’s methodical research and beautiful writing.)

Getting to Know Claudette Colvin, Thank You Mr. Hoose

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice By Phillip Hoose

     There are so many reasons for young people and everyone else to read Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice [Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2009] by Phillip Hoose. Here are two: Claudette Colvin is an important person and Hoose tells her story well.

     Claudette Colvin lived in Montgomery, Alabama where, famously, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus. The date of Ms. Parks’ action: December 1, 1955. But on March 2, 1955, nine months before Ms. Parks’ arrest, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus and got arrested. A brave teenager!

     So we start by pondering why Claudette Colvin’s story is one that has not been widely told. Perhaps the tellings of Rosa Parks’ arrest filled up the unwritten quotient for discussions about women in history.

     Too many aspects of the Montgomery story, the work of Jo Ann Robinson (look her up), the arrest of Mary Louise Smith (look her up too), the case against Montgomery’s segregation on buses brought by five women (including Claudette Colvin) that ultimately led to the end of the practice, and the women who walked or found other ways to honor the Montgomery bus boycott, seem to get placed in the background, behind the men. We have wanted to place Martin Luther King Jr. and male leaders at the center of this history. When we include people like Claudette Colvin, we are forced to move the men a bit to the side. We then get a truer picture of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

     So I am grateful that Hoose puts Claudette Colvin’s story out there front and center. Along the way, we do also get to know Jo Ann Robinson and Mary Louise Smith. It is important that young people, and all of us, are introduced to these amazing people who seem to get pushed aside. Once we discover these people, we might then ask why we have not known about them before.

     And Hoose grounds the book in statements from fourteen interviews he did with Claudette Colvin. That act allows students to directly encounter a primary historical document in some depth. Hoose does a great job letting Ms. Colvin talk and tell her own story. He does place her direct comments in the context of his own well-written narrative, but he is generous in letting her speak. I am guessing he realized that, beyond getting history from a direct source, Ms. Colvin is also a great storyteller.

     We get to know Claudette Colvin well. We get to see the person who embodies the historical event. That becomes important. From Ms. Colvin’s telling, we learn that her working class background and her pregnancy deemed her unsuitable to be the face of the bus boycott. Ms. Colvin bravely sat and, in Hoose’s book, she tells her own story forthrightly with pride and with some anger. Still, she comes off as a gentle soul who acted and made a difference.

     As young people get to know this incredible person, they experience her as a human being. Seeing her humanity will allow young people to realize they share that humanity and they too can act.

      In addition, by allowing Ms. Colvin to emerge as a fascinating character Hoose engages the reader. I did indeed want to keep reading.

     Hoose weaves Ms. Colvin’s individual story into the bigger Montgomery Bus Boycott narrative. In Hoose’s telling, Martin Luther King becomes a supporting actor. This is important. We have a tendency to want to make Dr. King the civil rights movement when, in truth, the movement is made up of the actions of many, many people. Hearing about Claudette Colvin reminds us of those people.

     Mr. Hoose has a grand storytelling sense. The entire narrative moves briskly. We are drawn in. He provides rich detail that allows the narrative to contain life.

     And detail is different from information. Hoose uses sidebars to include the sort of information we might need to pass a history test (The NAACP, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, The Montgomery Improvement Association). The reader needs that information to better understand the story. In many history classes, the information becomes an end in itself and so we forget what we learn. In Hoose’s book, the context stands front and center. We can study that information and place it within a story. The information then takes on a meaning and we remember it.

     Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice is a wonderful book. It should be used in schools as a way to engage young people in rich, character-driven nonfiction and to let them know about important people who too often get left out of classroom conversation. I encourage adults to read this book as well. I know that I found it an engaging read. As with young people, I predict adults will find a power in Claudette Colvin’s story. Many will wonder, why they were never told about what this brave teenager did. Thank you Phillip Hoose for correcting that error and thank you Claudette Colvin for generously sharing your life.

Steve Sheinkin, The Maestro

Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team by Steve Sheinkin

I did not realize how much I cared about college football or Jim Thorpe until I read Steve Sheinkin’s Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team (Roaring Book Press, 2017). Steve Sheinkin is a maestro.

     In Undefeated Sheinkin tells an engaging and important story, a story with several moving parts. As he conveys the big story about the Carlisle football team, he pauses to pull along other stories, many interconnected stories. The biography of Jim Thorpe. Discussions of Pop Warner, the Carlisle coach. Descriptions of the Carlisle Indian School. The rise of football.  The history of Native Americans at the start of the twentieth century.

     And he tells about each via stories that drew me in.

     The themes are also important, especially one notion that is fundamental to the book: the cultural genocide of native peoples. We experience that horror as imbedded in the lives of native children and the ugly words of people who were meant to protect them.

     “To civilize the Indian, get him into civilization. To keep him there, let him stay.” That is the motto at Carlisle Indian School. Sheinkin shares this with the reader as an event, where Richard Henry Pratt, Carlisle’s founder and first administrator, has a girl shout this out to the rest of the school. The book also includes a before and after photo of one student, the before photo containing the image of the student when he came to Carlisle and the after showing him “civilized” with shorn hair and western clothes. The pictures are stark in their demonstration of the cultural genocide that took place at Carlisle. Sheinkin quietly presents the horror, allowing the reader to take in the magnitude of the crime with minimal comment.

     Sheinkin shows how the racism that drove Carlisle was actually an infection existing throughout the country.  Sheinkin offers a comparison between the Carlisle student’s experience and Jackie Robinson’s experience in the future. Both the football players and Mr. Robinson had to demonstrate calm in the face of the constant racist remarks made by other players.

     Sheinkin’s narrative is powerfully engaging. He shifts focus, allowing stories to ultimately connect. I would get engaged in the narrative about Carlisle’s football team, forgetting that the book was also about Jim Thorpe. So Sheinkin had me hooked on the Carlisle story and then moved to a chapter on Jim Thorpe, equally engaging.

      I like how people speak in Undefeated. Sheinkin includes short quotes throughout. That allows speakers to display personality which further draws in readers. Here is Teddy Roosevelt at a lunch with some football coaches: “Football is on trial. Because I believe in the game, I want to do all I can to save it.” The quote allows us to see a president who involves himself in seemingly everything. Or Pop Warner’s words: “I opposed the forward pass as entirely foreign to the game.” The reader gets to see the contemporary sense of one aspect of the game that today we take for granted. We might have wondered before we read the book, “How could anyone oppose the forward pass?”

     Sheinkin shows the flux in football’s development during this earlier time. The reader experiencess football being invented. What a good way to teach an important lesson! We all tend to view the world as fixed. By looking back at earlier moments, we see how things have not always been as they are. In the case of collegiate football, it took much invention and change to get it to where it is today.

     The book is well researched. Sheinkin uses some of that research to spice up the telling, with newspaper headlines and those aforementioned quotes. Racist headlines (“Indians Out to Scalp the Cadets”) reveal the ugliness of an earlier age and a reminder that accusations of pc language often reveal ignorance of this accepted racist talk from those earlier days.

     For my taste, Sheinkin overdoes the descriptions of football games. Those tellings get somewhat overdone for me.They also slows the momentum of the book. So Carlisle is amazingly great. The only place they have to go is a little greater. What else might drive this story? I will add though that Sheinkin does a wonderful job of describing each individual game.

      I am certain some would find the many descriptions enjoyable. Still, I feel myself slogging into p. 164, reading about one more game, this one a game with Syracuse. This criticism is perhaps not fair. I may be wanting a different book from the one Sheinkin chose to write.

     There are some important stories Sheinkin introduces that need development. One is the controversy over Jim Thorpe and his participation in the Olympics. Jim Thorpe loses his medals because he had played professional baseball over the summer. I find it ironic that he lost his medals for playing baseball, a sport he did not excel at when he became a fulltime professional baseball player. I wanted to hear more about this tragedy.

     The other story that gets short changed is the story of Pop Warner. We find out toward the end of the book that Pop Warner was a bit of a sleaze. I would have liked these stories to play a bigger role throughout the book than they did and for the reader to find out earlier that he is not always such a great guy.

     It is also amazing how Jim Thorpe has multiple athletic talents. To some extent, Jim Thorpe’s story does not get as full a discussion as I would have liked. He seems to be a fascinating character.

     And being from Pennsylvania, I would have appreciated a comment or two about that PA town bearing his name. O.K. That is just me being state-proud.

       Despite the critical comments, I still think this is a great book. It tells an important story, mainly about the ugly racism experienced by native peoples during the later parts of the nineteenth century and early parts of the twentieth century. Sheinkin’s strength is in making history story-like. Historical figures are given personality through their actions and words. When information is provided, it is in the service of the story being told. Along with Jean Fritz, Steve Sheinkin is the measure for good history writing.