Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America

FAIN: FZ-250480-16

W. Caleb McDaniel
Rice University (Houston, TX 77005-1827)

The story of Henrietta Wood, an African American woman who won reparations in federal court from her former enslavers. Emancipated twice, her life covered a century of slavery, freedom, and strained race relations from her birth in Kentucky in 1818 to her death in Chicago in 1912.

A Case of Reparations is the first book to tell the story of Henrietta Wood, a black woman who sued one of her former enslavers in federal court in the 1870s and won. Born enslaved in Kentucky in 1818 but manumitted in Cincinnati in 1848, Wood was kidnapped and sold back into slavery in 1853. Wood was sold again in 1855 to a Mississippi planter, who took her to Texas in 1863 to prevent her emancipation during the Civil War. She returned to Ohio in 1869 and filed a $20,000 suit against her kidnapper, Zebulon Ward. A decade later, in the twilight of Reconstruction, a jury awarded Wood $2,500 in damages. By narrating the stories of Wood, Ward, and Wood's son, who became a lawyer in twentieth-century Chicago, this book uses an individual case to explore what emancipated black Americans won, and did not win, from the Civil War and Reconstruction. It also demonstrates both the promise and the limits of individual slave reparations as Americans continue to debate them in the present.

Associated Products

Open Research Notebook (Web Resource)
Title: Open Research Notebook
Author: W. Caleb McDaniel
Abstract: This continually updated wiki keeps a record of my ongoing research for my book manuscript on Henrietta Wood and related projects. It provides scholars and the general republic with a window onto the process of doing historical research.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://wiki.wcaleb.rice.edu
Primary URL Description: The front page for the Wiki that hosts my Open Research Notebook

Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America (Book)
Title: Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
Author: W. Caleb McDaniel
Abstract: The unforgettable saga of one enslaved woman's fight for justice--and reparations Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded with Wood's employer, abducted her, and sold her back into bondage. She remained enslaved throughout the Civil War, giving birth to a son in Mississippi and never forgetting who had put her in this position. By 1869, Wood had obtained her freedom for a second time and returned to Cincinnati, where she sued Ward for damages in 1870. Astonishingly, after eight years of litigation, Wood won her case: in 1878, a Federal jury awarded her $2,500. The decision stuck on appeal. More important than the amount, though the largest ever awarded by an American court in restitution for slavery, was the fact that any money was awarded at all. By the time the case was decided, Ward had become a wealthy businessman and a pioneer of convict leasing in the South. Wood's son later became a prominent Chicago lawyer, and she went on to live until 1912. McDaniel's book is an epic tale of a black woman who survived slavery twice and who achieved more than merely a moral victory over one of her oppressors. Above all, Sweet Taste of Liberty is a portrait of an extraordinary individual as well as a searing reminder of the lessons of her story, which establish beyond question the connections between slavery and the prison system that rose in its place.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sweet-taste-of-liberty-9780190846992
Primary URL Description: Publisher's item page
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780190846992
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Prizes

Pulitzer Prize
Date: 5/1/2020
Organization: Pulitzer Prize Board and Columbia University
Abstract: The unforgettable saga of one enslaved woman's fight for justice--and reparations Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded with Wood's employer, abducted her, and sold her back into bondage. She remained enslaved throughout the Civil War, giving birth to a son in Mississippi and never forgetting who had put her in this position.

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