Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave

Dunbar’s explorations of the black female experience in Never Caught often center on the vulnerabilities of the Black female body, which comes to symbolize the strength of a population endangered by both racism and misogyny.

Enslaved women working in the domestic sphere were required to carry heavy loads, often in extreme heat and cold, to spend hours over hot stoves, and to be on call at all times to handle their enslaver’s demands. They were often kept at the main house, which created a sense of alienation and class barrier between them and those living in enslaved quarters. Enslaved women could be raped or bred to produce enslaved children and were required to work for the duration of their pregnancies. Even free black women had to worry about rape and working while pregnant, as taking any time off meant losing what little money they could earn.

Dunbar notes that more enslaved men ran away simply because it was easier for men due to the types of work they performed and the greater ease they had of protecting themselves once they escaped. Nearly every chapter describes how an enslaved woman was at a particular disadvantage, and the text notes that even free Black women died before age 40 due to the difficulty of their situations. Whether free or enslaved, the Black female body undergoes significant hardship, a fact that has never received proper historical acknowledgment.