The internet is filled with things. Here are some of them.
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.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Screws v. United States became the legal foundation for modern federal civil rights enforcement. It opened the door for police officers to be held accountable under federal law for violating constitutional rights.
The legacy of Screws v. United States affirmed the federal government’s authority to prosecute state and local officials for civil rights violations committed “under color of law.” By refusing to strike down the federal law, the Court preserved a tool for federal intervention against official misconduct. This was a significant affirmation of federal power in protecting individual liberties against state-level abuse.There is still no justice for Robert Hall.
However, the “specific intent” standard established by the Court made these federal prosecutions difficult to win. Proving that an officer acted with the specific purpose of violating a known constitutional right became a formidable barrier for federal prosecutors. This high standard of proof was an impediment to justice for victims of civil rights abuses, as it allowed defendants to claim ignorance of the law as a defense.
For decades following the 1945 decision, the Screws standard shaped the strategy of federal civil rights cases. While the precedent upheld the government’s power in theory, in practice it made securing convictions a challenging endeavor. The ruling highlighted the tension between holding officials accountable and protecting them from prosecution based on vague legal standards, a tension that continues to be debated.
In the early days of the New York Police Department, a cabal of officers would literally kidnap black people off the street and "return" them to the South, collecting the Fugitive Slave bounty for doing so, even if the black person in question had never been a slave nor a fugitive. It was a corrupt system of institutional racism inside an organization which still exists to this day.