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

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History

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 ...