The Blue Tarp

Written by Courtney Daniel regarding the Ona Judge Mural Unveiling.

I was standing front and center when they pulled it down.

The blue tarp fell. And for one full second, nobody made a sound. Then the roar came. And I felt it in my chest before I heard it with my ears.

Ona Judge Staines looked out over Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Two hundred and thirty years
after she arrived on these shores with nothing but the decision that poverty was better than
chains.

I didn't know her name three years ago.

She was born enslaved at Mount Vernon in 1773. Property of George and Martha Washington.
The first family of a country being built on the idea that all men are created equal. She cooked
their food. She dressed their bodies. She made their lives beautiful while hers was not her own.
In 1796, she found out Martha Washington planned to give her away. A gift. To a granddaughter
known for cruelty. So at twenty-two years old, Ona Judge walked out of the President's house in
Philadelphia while the family sat at dinner. And she did not look back.

She hid on a boat to Portsmouth.

She chose poverty. Over enslavement. On purpose. With full understanding of the cost. And we did not put that in the history books.

But here is what I need you to understand. She did not just pass through Portsmouth. She planted
herself here. On land that was never meant for her. Surrounded by people who could have
betrayed her at any moment. She married a free Black sailor named Jack Staines. She had three
children. Eliza. Will. And Nancy. She taught herself to read and write in this city. Skills that had
been denied to her her entire life. She built a home, a family, a community on soil that the law
said she had no right to claim.

Washington's agents came for her. Twice. A senator's family secretly warned her and she fled
with her infant daughter in a hired horse and carriage in the middle of the night. Eight miles to
Greenland, New Hampshire. And still she stayed. Still she built. Still she refused.

She was not passing through Portsmouth. She was choosing it. Every single day.

She outlived her husband. She outlived all three of her children. She died in Greenland in 1848.
And she is buried there now in an unmarked grave on private property.

We almost let that be the whole story. A woman who chose freedom buried in a grave with no
name on it.

I am not from New Hampshire. I moved here. And I spent years living in this state before anyone
told me that an enslaved Black woman had made this city her sanctuary. That she had walked
these streets. That she had built her life in a place that could have returned her to bondage at any
moment. That she had looked this community in the eye and decided it was worth staying for.

That silence is not an accident.

Right now in 2026 there are executive orders designed to scrub stories like hers from public
memory. Debates about what belongs on walls and in classrooms. Arguments about whose
history is appropriate to teach.

And on May 23rd a crowd stood on Court Street and roared when her face rose up on that
building.

That roar was an answer.

Black history is not a subcategory. It is American history. It is the history of a woman who called
the bluff of a founding father and won. It is the history of a community in Portsmouth that
sheltered her. It is the history of what freedom actually costs when someone has to fight for it
with their body, their safety, and their life.

Artist Manuel Ramirez painted her against the backdrop of Portsmouth's waterfront. The way she
would have seen it the day she arrived. Scared. Determined. Free.

I stood in that crowd and I thought about every name I still don't know. Every person who shaped
this place and never made it into a single textbook I was handed. Every story sitting quietly in
the margins of a history written to leave them out.

So I am asking you to be curious.

Not outraged. Not guilty. Curious.

What history is sitting right under your nose that no one ever told you about? What names are
buried in your city, your neighborhood, your state, in unmarked graves and out of print
textbooks, waiting for someone to simply ask the question?

Ona Judge did not wait for someone to give her freedom. She went and took it.

She chose this place. She built her life here. She left a legacy here.

The least we can do is finally learn her name.

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To learn more about Ona Judge Staines and the work of the Black Heritage Trail of New
Hampshire, come see the mural at 222 Court St, Portsmouth, NH.