Sign Our Petition for an Ona Judge Day
We launched a petition to urge the Mayor and City Council to make May 21st a day to honor the brave former slave who escaped from George Washington — because no one tells Philadelphia to keep the truth to ourselves.
Alex Ford, a Philly-based actor who portrays Ona Judge, at the Betsy Ross House / Photograph by Ronnie Polaneczky
Listen to the interview edition here:
Today, Philadelphia magazine and The Philadelphia Citizen, in collaboration with Avenging the Ancestors Coalition and the Ona Judge Coalition, are launching a petition to ask the City to officially recognize May 21st as “Ona Judge Day” in Philadelphia — in 2026 and every year hereafter.
Why May 21st?
Because on that date in 1796, the 22-year-old Judge, enslaved by George Washington right here in Philadelphia, escaped his clutches. With help from the city’s Free Black community, she fled to New Hampshire. For years, an outraged and humiliated Washington tried to kidnap her back into bondage. At every turn, Judge outwitted the country’s most powerful man and was never, ever caught.
Talk about courage. Talk about endurance.
Talk about real Philly grit.
Since 2010, Judge’s story had been told at “The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” the dignified open-air exhibit at 6th and Market streets, the site where Judge and eight others were held captive by Washington.
But in January, the National Park Service, on orders from the Trump administration, dismantled the memorial because it presented “a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
Philly leaders and activists called bullshit and filed a lawsuit to restore the exhibit. It is now working its way through the court.
But you know what will never need a court order to be shouted publicly from the city’s rooftops? Ona Judge’s story itself.
That’s why Mayor Parker and City Council should officially recognize every May 21st as Ona Judge Day, and share the lessons of Judge’s life throughout the year. Not just at the site where she slept in a dank basement but at our kitchen tables, in our school classrooms and worship pulpits, in the corridors of City Hall and the hallways of the state Capitol — whether the slavery memorial is ever restored at the President’s House or not.
Or, as Carl Singley, co-founder of the Ona Judge Coalition, puts it: “What the city chooses to do matters nationally. If Philadelphia insists on telling the full story — liberty and slavery together — it sets the tone for how the country understands its own origins.”
In the call to honor Judge, we honor truth and continually recommit to the privilege of telling it. Together, let’s show the world that you can tear a Philadelphia memorial down, but you will never, ever shut a Philadelphian up.
To join the movement, click here. And then share the link with others. Even better, reach out to your Councilmember. (Don’t know who your Councilmember is? Click here.)
To learn more:
- Read “Why Philly Needs an Ona Judge Day” in Philadelphia magazine, by Ronnie Polaneczky
- Watch Ona Judge: A Woman Who Escaped Slavery & the Washingtons
- Hear from actor Alexandra Ford, who portrays Ona Judge in and around Philadelphia’s historic sites, here.
