In 1853, Henrietta Wood was living as a free woman in Cincinnati, Ohio, when she was kidnapped and sold into slavery by a powerful adversary: a deputy sheriff, prison keeper, and businessman named Zebulon Ward. Eventually Wood was taken to cotton plantations in Mississippi and Texas. She was still enslaved in the Lone Star State at the end of the Civil War. But after regaining her freedom, she returned to Ohio and sued Ward for restitution, testing the possibility of reparations for slavery. ... Did she win?

The Littlefield Lecture Series is pleased to present Pulitzer Prize-winning historian W. Caleb McDaniel, author of Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America

Dr. McDaniel is a historian of the United States. His teaching and research to date have focused on the nineteenth century, the Civil War Era, and the struggle over slavery. He is also co-chair of the Rice University Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice.

His most recent book, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, published by Oxford University Press in 2019, was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in History and the Civil War and Reconstruction book prize from the Organization of American Historians. It tells the story of Henrietta Wood, a formerly enslaved woman who, in the twilight of Reconstruction, won the largest known sum ever awarded by a U.S. court in restitution for slavery.

Dr. McDaniel’s first book, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionism and Transatlantic Reform, was published in 2013 and won the Merle Curti award from the Organization of American Historians and the James L. Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.

His scholarly articles have appeared in the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of the Early Republic, American Quarterly, and elsewhere, and he has published essays in the New York Times, Smithsonian, The Atlantic, and other outlets. Learn more about his work on his personal website and on his profile page. 

Date: Wednesday April 16, 2025

Time: 5:30 PM

Venue: Robert L. Patton Building (RLP) 0.128

Address: 305 E 23rd St., Austin, TX 78712 | Google Map

Parking: San Jacinto Garage, Brazos Garage | PTS website

View/Download Event Poster: bit.ly/4bKaQUq

Free and open to the public. In-person only. No registration necessary.