On April 17, 1878, twelve white jurors entered a federal courtroom in Cincinnati, Ohio, to deliver the verdict in a now-forgotten lawsuit about American slavery. The plaintiff was Henrietta Wood, described by a reporter at the time as “a spectacled negro woman, apparently sixty years old.” The defendant was Zebulon Ward, a white man who had enslaved Wood 25 years before. She was suing him for $20,000 in reparations.
Already by 1878 viewing this case as a “relic of slavery times,” the court was nervous about setting up slavery reparations as a precedent despite finding the specific facts of her case compelling. They thusly awarded in favor of Wood, but granted her only $2,500. This is paltry, as even adjusting for inflation the value is roughly $80,000 today (Ward's estate was valued at $600,000 at the time of his death, or $20 million in 2026). Yet, as the article points out, the Wood family used the money wisely:
After her suit, she moved with her son to Chicago. With help from his mother’s court-ordered compensation, Arthur bought a house, started a family and paid for his own schooling. In 1889, he was one of the first African-American graduates of what became Northwestern University’s School of Law. When he died in 1951, after a long career as a lawyer, he left behind a large clan of descendants who were able to launch professional careers of their own, even as redlining and other racially discriminatory practices put a chokehold on the South Side neighborhoods where they lived. For them, the money Henrietta Wood demanded for her enslavement made a long-lasting difference.
Already by 1878 viewing this case as a “relic of slavery times,” the court was nervous about setting up slavery reparations as a precedent despite finding the specific facts of her case compelling. They thusly awarded in favor of Wood, but granted her only $2,500. This is paltry, as even adjusting for inflation the value is roughly $80,000 today (Ward's estate was valued at $600,000 at the time of his death, or $20 million in 2026). Yet, as the article points out, the Wood family used the money wisely: