Sold Back Into Slavery, She Sued for Restitution — and Won
Henrietta Wood’s brave fight predates the current debate over reparations
Picture this: A free Black woman is being transported along in a carriage towards Covington, Kentucky in April of 1853. She had been working for a Ms. Rebecca Boyd in Cincinnati for three months. This Black woman is not certain of the purpose of the trip. Maybe it was so that Ms. Boyd could see about some money she was owed. Maybe not. The ride between Cincinnati and Covington was geographically and culturally significant. Between these two towns was the Ohio River, also known as “River Jordan,” the aqueous portal to freedom for enslaved Blacks. It was also the bridge between this free Black woman’s former life as an enslaved girl living on a Kentucky farm before being sold after her initial owner’s death. Ms. Boyd gets out of the vehicle and this Black woman sees money being exchanged in the darkness. Then, the Black woman is forced to walk with strange men while Boyd returns to the carriage and returns back to the river. Unbeknownst to her, she is being kidnapped and sold back into slavery.
But this is not how her story ends. Rather, it was just beginning, and the long-awaited recompense — in the form of money doled out from her captor — to this crime is what pulls her life directly into the…
