The Dawn of Detroit - by Tiya Miles (Paperback)

About the Book

Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South. Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest's iconic city: Detroit. She has pieced together the experience of the unfree--both native and African American--in the frontier outpost of Detroit, a place wildly remote yet at the center of national and international conflict, unearthing struggles that remained hidden from view until now.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize
Winner of the American Book Award
Winner of the Merle Curti Social History Award
Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize
Winner of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award (Nonfiction)

Finalist for the John Hope Franklin Prize
Finalist for the Harriet Tubman Prize
Finalist for the Cundill History Prize

A New York Times Editor's Choice selection

"If many Americans imagine slavery essentially as a system in which black men toiled on cotton plantations, Miles upends that stereotype several times over."
-New York Times Book Review

"[Miles] has compiled documentation that does for Detroit what the Works Progress Administration and the Federal Writers' Project slave narratives did for other regions, primarily the South."
--Washington Post

"[Tiya Miles] is among the best when it comes to blending artful storytelling with an unwavering sense of social justice."
--Martha S. Jones in The Chronicle of Higher Education

"A necessary work of powerful, probing scholarship."
--Publisher Weekly (starred)

"A book likely to stand at the head of further research into the problem of Native and African-American slavery in the north country."
--Kirkus Reviews

From the MacArthur genius grant winner, a beautifully written and revelatory look at the slave origins of a major northern American city

Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South, and that Northern states and territories provided stops on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. In this paradigm-shifting book, celebrated historian Tiya Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest's iconic city: Detroit.

In this richly researched and eye-opening book, Miles has pieced together the experience of the unfree--both native and African American--in the frontier outpost of Detroit, a place wildly remote yet at the center of national and international conflict. Skillfully assembling fragments of a distant historical record, Miles introduces new historical figures and unearths struggles that remained hidden from view until now. The result is fascinating history, little explored and eloquently told, of the limits of freedom in early America, one that adds new layers of complexity to the story of a place that exerts a strong fascination in the media and among public intellectuals, artists, and activists.

A book that opens the door on a completely hidden past, The Dawn of Detroit is a powerful and elegantly written history, one that completely changes our understanding of slavery's American legacy.

Review Quotes

Praise for Dawn of Detroit:
Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize
Winner of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award (Nonfiction)
Winner of the American Book Award
Winner of the Merle Curti Social History Award
Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize
Finalist for the John Hope Franklin Prize
Finalist for the Harriet Tubman Prize
Longlisted for the Cundill History Prize
A New York Times Editor's Choice selection
A Michigan Notable Book of 2018
A Booklist Editors' Choice Title for 2017

"Beautifully written and rigorously researched. . . . Throughout this riveting text, personal and family stories illustrate and advance a narrative that rewrites our understanding of slavery in the making of the United States."
-2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Jury

"If many Americans imagine slavery essentially as a system in which black men toiled on cotton plantations, Miles upends that stereotype several times over."
--New York Times Book Review

"In her new, groundbreaking history. . . [Miles] has compiled documentation that does for Detroit what the Works Progress Administration and the Federal Writers' Project slave narratives did for other regions, primarily the South."
--The Washington Post

"[Tiya Miles] is among the best when it comes to blending artful storytelling with an unwavering sense of social justice."
--Martha S. Jones in The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Miles' account of the founding and rise of Detroit is an outstanding contribution that seeks to integrate the entirety of U.S. history, admirable and ugly, to offer a more holistic understanding of the country."
--Booklist (starred)

"Historian Miles (Tales from the Haunted South) has written a book that will reorient the focus of early slavery in North America Westward to include Detroit as central to any understanding of the tangled relations of French, English, Euro-Americans, Indians, and Africans on the frontier from the 18th to early 19th century. A necessary work of powerful, probing scholarship."
--Publisher Weekly (starred)

"A book likely to stand at the head of further research into the problem of Native and African-American slavery in the north country."
--Kirkus Reviews

"In this exemplary history that shows how slavery made early Detroit, Professor Tiya Miles demonstrates that Malcolm X (whose activist father was lynched in Michigan) was right when he insisted that all of the United States is south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Out of careful research, supple prose, deeply humane generosity to her historical subjects, and a knack for uncovering gripping family narratives, Miles has crafted a work from which any reader can learn new things. There is no finer writer among historians than Tiya Miles."
--Edward Baptist, professor, department of history, Cornell University, and author of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

"'There is currently no historical marker acknowledging slavery in Detroit-- revealing that people were bought, sold, and held as property . . .' Tiya Miles tell us in her rich account, detailing Native American and African American slavery in that city and the surrounding countryside. The Dawn of Detroit is a brilliant telling of chattel bondage's long and twisted history and the evolution of race relations in the . . . City on the Straits."

About the Author

Tiya Miles is the recipient of a 2011 MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," and is an award-winning historian and former chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African studies at the University of Michigan. She lives in Ann Arbor.