At noon, join us and Speaker Dr. Caleb McDaniel for “Captain’s Story: Slavery and Freedom in the Archives of The Heritage Society and Rice University”

In 1997, archivists at Rice University learned of a document which referred by name to a person enslaved by William Marsh Rice, the university’s founder. But it was not until the work of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice (2019-2023) that the full significance of the document, held in the archives of the Heritage Society, became clear. In this talk, Prof. McDaniel will return to those archives to examine what they can teach us about the history of slavery, emancipation, and the Civil War era in Houston and its hinterlands, as well as the importance of the institutions that preserve archives today.

Speaker’s Biography

Dr. W. Caleb McDaniel is a historian of the United States. His teaching and research to date have focused on the nineteenth century, the Civil War Era, and the struggle over slavery. He is also co-chair of the Rice University Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice.

His most recent book, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, published by Oxford University Press in 2019, was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in History and the Civil War and Reconstruction book prize from the Organization of American Historians. It tells the story of Henrietta Wood, a formerly enslaved woman who, in the twilight of Reconstruction, won the largest known sum ever awarded by a U.S. court in restitution for slavery.

Dr. McDaniel’s first book, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionism and Transatlantic Reform, was published in 2013 and won the Merle Curti award from the Organization of American Historians and the James L. Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.

His scholarly articles have appeared in the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of the Early Republic, American Quarterly, and elsewhere, and he has published essays in the New York Times, Smithsonian, The Atlantic, and other outlets.