I was delighted to be joined by Caleb McDaniel, History professor and author of the Pulitzer prizewinning book, “Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America”. He told me the remarkable story of Henrietta Wood. Born into slavery in Kentucky, she was freed as an adult and worked as domestic worker. In 1853, her employers conspired to trick her into crossing the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, where she was recaptured and taken to work in the harrowing conditions of the Mississippi cotton fields. At the end of the Civil War, Wood was freed for the second time, where she sued her kidnapper for $20,000. Although she only received $2,500 (more than $60,000 today) it allowed her son, Arthur H. Simms, to buy a house in Chicago, and attend Union College of Law, now Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
Rapper and intellectual Akala talks to Dan about the way historical narratives are created, maintained and then broken down. He discusses slavery and abolitionism, the need for Britain to do more to acknowledge its imperial history, and how his own experiences growing up were shaped by these narr...
Gary Gerstle joined me on the podcast to discuss two hundred years of U.S. history. He argues that the roots of the current crisis lie in two contrasting theories of power that the Framers inscribed in the Constitution.
Annina Van Neel showed me around Saint Helena, a small scrap of land in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This island is the most significant physical trace of the Transatlantic slave trade middle passage.
