my first book about african-american women in the north and i came across an advertisement for a hundredway, and enslaved person who had run from the president's house in philadelphia. may 1796. and i was sort of caught up looking through microfilm and old newspapers and this made me pause and i said, wait, who is this person who ran away? she was named only judge in the advertisement. i thought, wait a minute, i don't know this person and that was troubleing to me. this miss area of expertise and i had no idea who that's owny judge was. and there was something that was very sort of compelling about this advertisement, never sort of escaped me. and i said, you know, i'm going to come back those important story and try to trace this woman. i need answers. so i finished the first book and here i am. man years later. was a lengthy processy attempting to recover the life ona judge and those who do specifically early african-american history, doing this kind of work in archives where the evidence is slim, factual evidence often doesn't exist because people of color, women in particular, often re