Susanna Ashton teaches at Clemson University in South Carolina. A former Fellow at both Yale and Harvard as well as a Fulbright scholar, her work has appeared in both
scholarly and popular venues, usually chewing on ideas about paperwork, archives, and 19th-century freedoms. Her series on fugitivity and runaways can be found at
The Runaway Chronicles.
Ashton is the author of
A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
At Electric Lit Ashton tagged
seven "books that model new ways to see Black history and American history, with all of its beauty and cruelty, afresh." One title on the list:
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel
From the title of this winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History, you’d think you’re going to read a powerful story about reparations of some sort. And for sure, that’s what it is. But be ready: it lands in places you won’t see coming. Henrietta Wood was born enslaved but in 1848, in Ohio, she was legally freed and 
thought her days of bondage were over. In 1853, after a few brief sweet years of freedom, though, she was kidnapped by a Sheriff named Zubulon Ward, dragged over the border into Kentucky, and sold back into bondage. She wasn’t free again until after the Civil War. This kind of tale could have been buried forever and no one would have remembered her particular tragedy. But Wood wasn’t going to let this injustice go by. She didn’t forget, and she didn’t forgive. With a sharp eye for detail and a rich historical framing that highlights the compassion and dignity of the remarkable woman at the core of the story, McDaniel tells how Wood went on to sue Ward for damages and won not only a moral victory but also a substantial financial one and one which was to set the stage and standard of restitution thereafter. That standard has rarely been upheld, but thanks to McDaniel’s resurrection of the story, we can see how reparations, no matter how meager meant something powerful to the survivors.
Read about
another book on the list.
The Page 99 Test: Sweet Taste of Liberty.
--Marshal Zeringue
scholarly and popular venues, usually chewing on ideas about paperwork, archives, and 19th-century freedoms. Her series on fugitivity and runaways can be found at The Runaway Chronicles.
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