The Pulitzer Prize in history was awarded to W. Caleb McDaniel for his new book about slavery and reparations during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America is, according to the Pulitzer Prize Committee a “masterfully researched meditation on reparations based on the remarkable story of a 19th century woman who survived kidnapping and re-enslavement to sue her captor.” According to its publisher, the book tells how:
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.
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