The Long Walk

Judith C. Owens-Lalude is the great-granddaughter of George Henry "Pap" Johnson born in 1850 and enslaved with his mother, Clarissa. They lived on Ben Miller's 600-acre farm in North Central Kentucky, now less than an hour's drive from Louisville, Kentucky, where Owens-Lalude grew up and resided until 2017. After listening to tales told by her family's closest members about their ancestors, she wanted to know more and visited the farm where her ancestors had been enslaved. She strolled the grounds, reflected at the fireplace hearth where a slave cabin once stood, wandered along the streams and creeks, and photographed the barn and other outbuildings that were a part of her great-grandpa's and his mother's daily world. Inspired to write a book, Owens-Lalude traveled to her husband's native Nigeria for a better understanding of the history of slavery in the Americas. She wanted to know its impact on other Africans and African Americans, including her family who lived in Nelson and Spencer counties, Kentucky. She was also intrigued by the writings of Harry Smith, Fifty Years in Slavery in the United States and Isaac Johnson's Slavery Days in Old Kentucky. Both authors were enslaved in Jefferson, Nelson, and Spencer counties where Owens-Lalude's family was also enslaved and later lived as freed people. From these readings, her research, her travels, and her powerful imagination, Owens-Lalude wrote two compelling novels: The Long Walk: Slavery to Freedom and Miss Lucy: Slave and Civil War Nurse.