National Book Award finalists: 'Never Caught' and 'Democracy in Chains'

Two 2017 National Book Award finalists speak at Concordia College in Moorhead about their new books.

Part 1:

Erica Armstrong Dunbar is the author of "Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge." She is a professor of history at Rutgers University and said she wrote the book to "blow open some of the myths we have about slavery."

Dunbar titled the book "Never Caught" because "there is a distinction between being free, and never caught. Ona Judge was never caught."

George and Martha Washington never used the word slave. "They always refer to the enslaved as servants." George Washington sold some of his slaves for infractions of the rules, and even condoned whipping for insubordination.

But Dunbar says George Washington struggled with the idea of slavery, and at one point wrote that he "wished to get quit of his Negroes." He decreed that his slaves should be free upon the death of his wife Martha, and Martha emancipated his (but not her) slaves early.

When Ona Judge fled, she lived in hiding for nearly a half-century. "But how free is free when slavery exists?" said Dunbar. "What does it mean to be a free person if you can be kidnapped and dragged into the jaws of slavery?"

Part 2:

Nancy MacLean is the author of "Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America." She is a professor of history at Duke University.

This book explores the philosophies and strategies that animate those on the political right. University of Virginia economist James M. Buchanan provided the blueprint for the libertarian movement.

MacLean says her research uncovered the operation that he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to limit participatory democracy through Constitutional means.

She says Buchanan's argument was "if you don't like the outcome of public policy over the long term, don't think about changing the rulers, but think about changing the rules."

MacLean concludes that "what we're seeing today is very much akin to the 1860s and the 1930s in terms of a very determined and powerful group of people who are hostile to democracy, as the Confederacy was, and the American Liberty League was in the 1930s, and they are moving along very successfully."

The annual National Book Awards event was held March 15, 2018 at Concordia College in Moorhead. The moderator was Concordia (and Minnesota Public Radio) alumnus John Ydstie, a longtime reporter and host at NPR.

To listen to the event, click the audio player above.