The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits

“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

The prizewinning, nationally celebrated account of the slave origins of a major northern city

A brilliant paradigm-shifting book that “transports the reader back to the eighteenth century and brings to life a multiracial community that began in slavery” (The New York Times), The Dawn of Detroitreveals for the first time that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest’s iconic city. Hailed by Publishers Weekly in a starred review as “a necessary work of powerful, probing scholarship,” The Dawn of Detroitmeticulously uncovers the experience of the unfree—both native and African American—in a place wildly remote yet at the center of national and international conflict.

Tiya Miles has skillfully assembled fragments of a distant historical record, introducing new historical figures and unearthing struggles that remained hidden from view until now. “In her eloquent account,” the Washington Post declared, “Miles conjures up a city of stark disparity and lives quashed.”