>> well, and take out the lifestream for this year for american history. i'm vice president of the university of columbia and we are delighted to be partnering once again at columbia and monitoring this event and was cspan's american history tv, present and in the future. thank you so much for joining us and for this important discussion and, the centers new annual stream. and at the center of the partnership is truly a department of history and moderated and embarks on mission last year to have engagement and social responsibility and the history of this urgent need that we must address. i'm especially delighted to introduce our panel tonight, doctor mcdaniel are featured spiegel, caleb mcdaniel, about humanities and the department of history. and the professor caleb mcdaniel specializes in u.s. history, and an american civil war era. in the latest book, a true story of slavery and restitution in america. on the weekly press and awarded the pulitzer prize for history and bravery in a more of the organization of american historian and in addition, the scholarly publication, it appeared in the new york times, the atlanta, and times. as an active leader in american history initiative read them also very pleased to introduce our monitor jordan, who the justice legal firm and it the 2021, 2022, - and jordan graduated as a history major from columbia college and recently at the law school. and facilitating collective visions around local government initiatives. and she currently works alongside in the community and southeastern louisiana to advocate for justice and the legacies of slavery. in the intersection of law and the justice theory and a recent publication, announced her as a her preparations on american plantation and explored the years of eminent domain and attributed the plantation land and buildings in louisiana. and pleased to introduce my colleague columbia university and moderator, and professor of american history in honor of eisenhower at columbia. and currently at the center for american history along with the columbia cochair and addressing it. [inaudible]. and often encouraged in the american civil war and reconstruction. and with the american and the south and is on the ethic human drama of reconstruction at the turn-of-the-century. in this power in politics for the civil war fell and wanted that was a final for the pulitzer prize in a member at the institute of american history. and also moderating it on our panelists, and inquiries from the audience. we encourage you to submit your questions using the online tool available this lifestream. and today's program, including information on a recent by columbia program which helps the long hidden histories that face women. .. >> professor stephanie mccurry. >> good evening, everyone. i'm very excited to see you all here. the center for american history is hosting a speaker series -- [inaudible] we'll have two more events in the spring semester. just to tell you what we're thinking about in choosing that theme. the idea that slavery had and -- significant material leading into the 21st century and which required the program -- [audio difficulty] public forums in recent years. the connection between the past and the present -- other parts of the world were shaped in the african slave trade. long history of this movement dating back to reparations -- [audio difficulty] in other parts of the world impacted or shaped by the african slave trade. this idea has a long history or this movement has a long history of formerly enslaved people in the 19th century, but it has also gained strength and currency through the impact of recent activism, journalism and scholarship. in that vein i think of the work of the new jim crow, our colleague starting with her first book and journalists like ta'nehisi coates and his 2014 essay, "the case for reparations," which he published in "the atlantic." and most recently, nikole hannah-jones' blockbuster 1619 project for "the new york times" which, as i'm sure you know, is the target of republican legislators and right-wing culture warriors. and settling on this capacious theme, our idea -- the directors, myself, frank and ty jones -- our idea is to use it to engage in questions about the meaning of enslavement as a central theme and force in american history and life from the 1850s to the present. so in that sense, it's openly and sort of definitely a history of the present. but far from dictating any position, we think of it as a way to pose a series of questions with the hope of opening up a conversation across disciplines and specialization. what does the idea of afterlife mean at the conception of historical time? one that spans and potentially collapses the considerable instance from the 17th century or even the 19th century to the present. what does it mean for an understanding of emancipation as a meaningful break in historical times. we're also interested in thinking about whether there are differences between the humanistic disciplines in their embrace or use of this concept or framework. and what are the implications for contemporary activism. one of the reasons we're so delighted to have jordan brewington with usen tonight. can we -- with us tonight. can we talk to end the system of enslavement of black people in the u.s. and elsewhere, and if we can, what does it mean to be an abolitionist today. these are the kinds of questions and conversations we hope to engage starting tonight and over the course of the academic year. in addition to professor mcdaniel, who is our lead speaker tonight, our own colleagues and former students are key interlocutors in this series starting, as you just heard, from jordan brewington who's talking to us tonight and who ann thornton just introduced. but in the spring we will also have sarah haley, our new colleague in history, and sadia hartman whose work is at the very center of this debate and scholarship. and that event will be in february 2022. and the final event will involve elizabeth hinton, a former ph.d. student in history at columbia who's now at yale history and law and who will headline the event in march and will be joined by our current colleague from the journalism school. and so with that, i just want to say how excited we are to launch this annual series tonight with caleb mcdaniel and jordan brewington. and with that, i'm going to turn it over to professor mcdaniel who will introduce us to the summit of his outstanding book, "sweet taste of liberty." >> thank you so much, stephanie, for that warm introduction. and thank you to all of the organizers of this event. it's truly an honor to be speaking with you this evening, especially after hearing about the many distinguished historians who will be speaking in this series after me. let me begin with a story about a lawyer. on august 8, 1948, the chicago sunday tribune published a profile about an african-american lawyer named arthur h. simms, a, quote, one-time slave who had been practicing law in chicago for more than 50 years. according to the tribune, he had been born enslaved in mississippi in 1856 to a mother described only as a laundress, and he remained activity at the ripe old age of ark active at the age of 92. a deputy clerk said that the lawyer was the oldest attorney still practicing in the city and, quote, just seemed to go on forever. simms had, indeed, seen a lot of his years in chicago. in 1887 he became one of the first african-american graduates of the union college of law, a two-year program whose alumni included a future governor of illinois and the populist politician and presidential candidate william jennings bryan. here is simms pictured with his graduating class of 1889 which a few years later became what is now northwestern university's school of law. in the years after his graduation, simms made a name for himself on the south side of chicago as the people's lawyer. his bread and butter cases were those of a general practice attorney defending those accused of small criminal scrapes, handling divorce, but he had some big cases as well. after the bloody chicago race riots of 1919 in which 23 black chicagoans were killed by white mobs and another 30 were injured -- 300 were injured, simms and a team of lawyers successfully defended a black woman named emma jackson from a murder charge by proving she had fired on a white rioter in self-defense. and by that time, simms had also become well known in the african-american community as a promoter of black-owned businesses. in 1905, he spoke about the topic, titling his lecture with one word, progress. in 1948, however, the chicago tribune did not say much about simms' long career other than the fact that it had been long. the reporter seemed most impressed by the lawyer's longevity, and the article said that simms credited his advanced age to some sage advice he had received in 1878. quote: an old doctor once told arthur h. simms that if he learned only what was good and kept adding to it, he would live long and sleep well at night. simms heeded the advice given him in 1878, and the wisdom kept him well. he will be 93 next january, and he sleeps well at night. the tribune did not identify who the old doctor was who handed simms the keys to a good night's sleep and a long life in 1878. perhaps he was a college professor. we know a thing or two about putting people to sleep. but i did not come here tonight to talk to you about sleep or, hopefully, to put you to sleep. i actually came here to tell you about something else far more interesting, i believe, that happened in simms' life in the year 1878. an event that i think was even more crucial in explaining his long career in the law than the advice he got from a doctor that same year. for 1878 was also the year when simms' mother, a formerly enslaved woman named henrietta wood, won the largest known sum ever awarded by a u.s. court in restitution for slavery. her story, the story of henrietta wood, is the one i tell in my book, "sweet taste of liberty," and it's a story without which arthur simms' story would not be complete. so let me briefly summarize the story of the book which follows henry yet that wood across -- henrietta wood across multiple state lines over nearly a century. now, unlike her son, no image of henrietta wood survives today. but we know that her life began in northern kentucky on the southern banks of the ohio river where henrietta was born enslaved around 1818 or in 1820. she could never be sure exactly which. at the age of 14, she later remembered, like many enslaved children in the upper south at that time, she was traumatically separated from her family and sold for the first time to a merchant in louisville. he sold her again a few years later to another merchant who forced wood to accompany if him to new orleans where she lived for about six or seven years before returning to kentucky. eventually, however, henrietta wood experienced what very few of the millions of people enslaved in the american south before the civil war did. in 1848 she won her freedom after her legal owner at the time moved with wood to cincinnati, a state whose constitution had outlawed slavery from the beginning. assed wood later recalled of -- as wood later recalled of that fateful day, quote: my mistress gave me my freedom, and my papers were recorded in the hamilton county, ohio, courthouse; papers that proved she was free. wood soon found, however, that freedom in antebellum america even in a free state was always a fragile thing. in july 1849 the courthouse where her freedom papers were officially recorded burned to the ground, leaving her only with a copy of the papers in her personal possession. and then in 1853 wood was lured by her employer at the time into a carriage and taken against her will across the ohio river into kentucky where she was cruelly kidnapped and reenslaved by a man named ward. the kidnappers later crossed the river to find and confiscate wood's personal copy of her freedom papers too. now, i first learned about that kidnapping the fall of 2014 when i read an interview that wood gave about her ordeal many years after she had regained her freedom. and i have to say, sad though it is that the kidnapping of a free black woman in 1853 was not the part of the interview that surprised me the most. historians of this period know that the kidnapping and enslavement of free black people was not uncommon in the years before the civil war. the reason was a combination of anti-black racism and greed. on the eve of the civil war, the 4 million people enslaved in the united states were worth an estimated $3 billion to their legal owners, more than all the factories and railroads in the country combined. kidnapping gangs in the upper south knew that if they could capture and sell free black people into the lower south, they could reap a huge profit. historian richard bell has even recently estimated that the thousands of freed people kidnapped and enslaved from the north may even have been roughly equal to the number of enslaved people who escaped from the south on the better known underground railroad. one of the most famous victims of kidnapping, of course, was solomon northam whose memory of -- memoir of his kidnapping was dramatized in the oscar-winning movie "12 years a slave." wood's story differed, however, in two important respects. first, abolitionists and allies in new york intervened in the case of solomon northam who regained his freedom and was reunited with his family in 1853, only a few months before wood was kidnapped. wood, on the other hand, would not taste freedom again until after the civil war and the legal abolition of slavery. like northup, wood never did accept her rep enslavement -- reenslavement. she fought. in fact, only hours after her kidnapping, she spoke in secret to a sympathetic innkeeper in kentucky who believed wood's story that she had been wrongfully enslaved. a lawyer in lexington was engaged to help, and the lawsuit was even filed in a fayette county, kentucky, court alleging that wood was a free woman. that case proved to be important later on, and its outcome was not a foregone conclusion. in earlier decades some kentucky courts had sometimes ruled that a person who had established domicile in a free state, as wood had in her five years of freedom in cincinnati, remained free even if brought into kentucky. wood's case, however, failed to convince the fayette county court who dismissed her freedom suit. wood's lawyer appealed the decision to kentucky's state supreme court, but there the case failed again in 1855. in truth, while not a foregone conclusion, that outcome was also not surprising. the willingness of southern state courts and legislatures to grant freedom in freedom suits waned to a vanishing point in the decade before the civil war. the legal system at the time was stacked against wood who was presumed a slave unless she could prove that she was free consider the fact that her kidnapping and the defender was zebulon ward, a man who had been serving as deputy sheriff in kentucky when he helped to orchestrate wood's abduction. between the kidnapping and the decision of the state's supreme court, wood also pursued and received a new job as the appointed superintendent of the kentucky state penitentiary in frankfurt. in that position ward was allowed to force the prisoners in the penitentiary to work for his own profit. he became a pioneer of the use of convict labor to enrich private firms who leased prisoners in penitentiaries from the state, a practice that a predated the civil war but later expanded across the american south, creating a racialized regime of incarceration and forced labor that one writer has called slavery by another name. and another citing a contemporary source described as worse than slavery. after the civil war, ward would go on to manage state penitentiaries in two other states, tennessee and arkansas, making several fortunes by exploiting the labor of prisoners who were disproportionately black. when he died in 1894, zebulon ward passed on an estate worth some $600,000 to his family, making him a multimillionaire in today's terms. that was the man who kidnapped -- and according to the state of kentucky -- now legally owned henrietta wood. and after he defeated her freedom suit in 1855, he eventually sold her to slave traders who took her down the river to nachez, mississippi. there in one of the largest slave markets in the deep south, wood was bought by a cotton planter who put her to work under brutal conditions in the fields and in his house, a place called brandon hall. and it was there that she gave birth to arthur h. simms who was born, as the chicago tribune later reported, in january 1856, quote, on a farm 11 miles from nachez, mississippi. his mother had been sold to the plantation owner, a man jailed gerard brandon, only a month before his birth. now, wood and simms remained in bondage at brandon hall which remains standing today in this picture here when the civil war began in 1861. but in 1863, as union armies began to close in on the district ready to enforce the emancipation proclamation issued earlier that year, gerard brandon decided to run. he forced some 300 enslaved people on the road and made them march some 400 miles to texas, settling for the duration of the war on rented land in robertson county. henrietta wood and her young son arthur were among those who brandon brought all that way to texas. after the long march, she later remembered that she arrived broken down and sick from exposure to the elements, forced to use crutches for an entire year, and she remained there in texas still enslaved and beyond the reach of u.s. armies until months after the surrender of general lee at appomattox. but henrietta wood's story did not end in texas. in 1869, a full 16 years after her kidnapping and 4 years after the passage of the 13th amendment, she managed to return to the cincinnati area with her son arthur, still alive and by her side. if -- she began working as a domestic worker for a lawyer in covington, kentucky, named harvey meyers. at some point she unfolded for meyers her long ordeal at the hands of zebulon ward whose name she had never forgotten. and then in 18 is 70, with meyers' legal help, she filed a remarkable lawsuit against zebulon ward in the superior court of cincinnati. the lawsuit laid out all that had happened since 1853, and it demanded that ward pay $20,000 in damages and lost wages for her many years of enslavement. now, i've already foreshadowed the outcome of this case, but before i give you the specifics, here's a question i've often been asked by readers about it. how unusual was wood's lawsuit? and the answer is that it was both unsurprising and surprising at the same time. unsurprising because enslaved and formerly enslaved people had articulated the demand for reparations from the earliest days of the nation's history and would continue making the demand long after wood's lawsuit. in 2014, just a few months before i began researching this book, an influential article by the award-winning journalist ta'nehisi coates revived conversations about what he called the case for reparations, but the struggle for reparations long predated that piece. at the turn of the century, another formerly enslaved woman, kali house, would lead a large grassroots movement of african-americans who lobbied congress for, quote, ex-slave pensions. and in the 1850s, abolitionists in new york had even lobbied the state legislature to provide compensation to solomon northup who i mentioned earlier. and those are just two examples of many reparations claims made over the years. but in other respects, wood's case was surprising and unusual. her specific claim of having been field and reenslaved, of having been kidnapped and wrongfully enslaved gave her a special legal standing even if her pe