W. Caleb McDaniel - "Sweet Taste of Liberty"

W. Caleb McDaniel discusses Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.

At the Co-op

RSVP HERE (Please note that your RSVP is requested but not required.)

About the book: Sweet Taste of Liberty tells the story of a woman who was born enslaved, freed before the Civil War, kidnapped and re-enslaved, and then freed again by the war. In 1870, she sued the man who had kidnapped and enslaved her in a federal court---and won. A jury awarded her $2,500 in a rare case of restitution that has relevance to ongoing debates about reparations for slavery. After her victory, Wood moved to Chicago, where her son became one of the first African American graduates of what became Northwestern University's School of Law. She died in 1912 in Chicago, while her son continued to live and practice law in and around Hyde Park until his death in 1951.

About the author: W. Caleb McDaniel is Associate Professor of History at Rice University, where he also serves as magister of Duncan College. His first book, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery (2013), won the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians and the James Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. He lives in Houston.