20/06/2026
In the United States, the story of Henrietta Wood is a landmark of justice. Born enslaved in Kentucky, she was freed in Cincinnati in 1848.
Five years later, a deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward kidnapped her and sold her back into slavery. She would spend the next 16 years in bo***ge in Texas and Mississippi.
After the Civil War, Wood regained her freedom. In 1870, she did something extraordinary: she filed a federal lawsuit against Ward.
The case dragged on for eight years. In 1878, a Cincinnati jury awarded her $2,500 in damages.
It was the largest known reparations award for slavery in American historhistory up to that point.
She used the money to support her son, who would become one of the first Black graduates from Northwestern's law school.
