Henrietta Wood

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‘He worked us..for three years after the emancipation proclamation…he called us all up in line and read it to us. We didn't know what to do with ourselves….I found Mr. Myers, of Covington, and he commenced the suit for me…and you know the rest."
 

Henrietta Wood (c. 1819 – 1912) was born into slavery in Kentucky, but freed as an adult, then later kidnapped and sold back into slavery. After the American Civil War, Wood successfully sued her kidnapper and won financial damages – the largest ever awarded for slavery reparations in the US. Being sold back into slavery was not an uncommon phenomenon in the Antebellum period when slavery laws varied from state to state. After her capture and re-enslavement, Wood persuaded an innkeeper to file a lawsuit on her behalf which after two years was proved unsuccessful because she could not produce papers proving her freedom. Following this trial, she was transferred to Mississippi and sold to one of the largest slaveowners, Gerard Brandon. Here she endured terrible conditions in cotton fields and in his home, subjected to both physical and sexual abuse and bearing one son, Arthur.  When the Union Army arrived following their victory to free slaves, Brandon marched his slaves to Texas to escape. Wood remained enslaved to him until 1869 – a year after the US government issued the emancipation act - when she was finally freed and returned to Cincinnati. However, this was not the end of her struggles as the lack of economic opportunities for a freed slave forced her to work in conditions not altogether better than her previous toils during enslavement.

What is remarkable about Wood’s story is not that she was passed in and out of slavery, but that she successfully sued her kidnapper. In the 1870s, she finally saved enough money to buy a boat ticket back up the Mississippi river, seeking to reconnect with lost family members. It was then, that she met a lawyer who gave her employment and helped her to build her historic case. Wood had no education, was illiterate, and had no real money of her own. However, her previously freed status gave her a unique advantage over others who had been enslaved their entire lives. Wood was also exceptional in that she saw the case as about more than just her kidnap but about slavery at large. Thus, she did not sue only for compensation for her kidnapping, but for the sum of wages that she had lost during the years she was captured. Her main challenge was to prove that she had been free before – as her kidnapper and defendant argued that she was always a slave and therefore he was within his legal rights to sell her. However, by proving that she had an established home for over five years in Cincinnati she demonstrated her freedom and won the case. She sued the man for $20,000 dollars, but was only awarded $2500 by the all-white jury who heard her case. However, this was still a significant sum of money equivalent to about $60,000 in today’s terms. She spent this money on a house and sending her son, Arthur, to law-school who became one of the first black lawyers in American history.

Wood’s victory is the largest known sum ever awarded by a U.S. court in restitution for slavery, and it received widespread press coverage at the time. However, it was lost during the rise of the Jim Crow era are renewed racism in the US. Her kidnapper never admitted fault, and thus shows the reluctance of white Americans to atone for their sins. However, Henrietta’s story remains important to show the material importance of reparations, the endurability of women’s strength and self-worth, and that even the most seemingly powerless in society (i.e. an uneducated, black, enslaved, woman) can take on the world and win.

You can read more of Henrietta’s story in her own words here (not for the fainthearted): http://wcaleb.rice.edu/omeka/collections/show/9 . That she was able to record her story despite her illiteracy is a further testament to her determination and courage. I learned of her story by a podcast with her biographer, Caleb McDaniel, on Dan Snow’s History Hit so I highly recommend giving that a listen too.


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