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Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
Audiobook9 hours

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

Written by W. Caleb McDaniel

Narrated by Paul Heitsch

4.5/5

()

About this audiobook

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. 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.

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.

Editor's Note

Pulitzer Prize winner…

“Sweet Taste of Liberty” won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for History. It’s “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,” wrote the Pulitzer Prize judges.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherTantor Audio
Release dateJan 14, 2020
ISBN9781494546687
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America

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Reviews for Sweet Taste of Liberty

4.5/5

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  • 5/5
    I greatly appreciated the joining together the current events of the time. This gave a greater perspective for the story and the extraordinary success of her case.
  • 4/5
    An interesting story of a freed slave who is taken captive and sold back into bondage and how she takes the man responsible to court. A good telling of the slave experience before and after the Civil War.
  • 5/5
    This work is about Ward, a slave owner, and Wood, a slave who twice gained and lost her freedom. Caleb in his prologue raises some of the questions coming out of Wood’s case. Where had men such as Ward gotten all their wealth? Where, for that matter, had the country gotten its riches? And what could the amount that Wood won do for families like hers? What did freedom mean without resitution for slavery?This enthralling story of Woods a woman who was twice enslaved and twice set free told by Caleb McDaniels. She won a case in federal court against one of her former masters, which gives us some small insight into how reparations might affect communities today. Caleb has brought this story out of the dust by weaving together newspaper accounts and court cases involving Woods.
  • 5/5
    A well researched about a woman's quest for reparations for her work as a slave in the mid eighteen hundreds. How this came about is a very fascinating story. Henrietta Wood received her freedom (with papers) from her master and was living in Cincinnati, Ohio. However, she is lured across the Ohio River where she is captured and becomes a slave again. Over the years she is able to make her way back to the North and finds a lawyer to take up her cause and get back income for her labor when she was wrongly enslaved. A very interesting look at slavery during that time.
  • 4/5
    An interesting book, but written in such a forward and backward way, it made me a bit crazy. All the pertinent details are told up front. And again. And yet again, all the while filling in some small new details. I must give the author much credit for not giving up on tracking down what papers still existed. Worth the read, but have patience!
  • 4/5
    A formerly enslaved woman sought and ultimately won damages for her (unlawful even then) reenslavement via deception and coercion. An interesting entry in “how was agency negotiated under coercion.”