Henrietta Wood

Henrietta Wood (c. 1819 – 1912) was an American woman held as a slave who won the largest verdict ever awarded for slavery reparations in the United States.

[2] In 1853, William Cirode's daughter and son-in-law, Josephine and Robert White, wanted to profit by recapturing Wood.

The lawsuit took two years, but was unsuccessful because it was not possible to produce papers in Kentucky proving that Wood was free; they had been burned in a courthouse fire in Cincinnati in 1849.

Wood worked in cruel conditions in the cotton fields and in the home on Brandon's plantations, and gave birth to her son, Arthur.

[1] Wood's successful trial did not begin a trend of similar reparations cases, and though it received national press coverage at the time, was largely forgotten in the following years.

[3] In 2019, W. Caleb McDaniel, a professor of history at Rice University, used court records and archives to research and publish a book about Wood's life called Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution.