I could not have taken up this book project, or completed it within the span of six years, without the wonderful collaboration and assistance of many giving people. Tayana Hardin, once a graduate student in American culture and now a professor in her own right, began work on this project as my first research assistant in the spring of 2012. I then applied to a campus program that funds undergraduate work-study students to conduct research with faculty members, invited graduate students in history and American culture to participate, and formed a small research team on slavery in Detroit. Our group of seven worked over a two-year period to find, transcribe, interpret, and present primary sources. The members of this team, Michelle Cassidy, Emily Macgillivray, Paul Rodriguez, Sarah Khan, Kaisha Brezina, and Alexandra Passarelli, were indispensable to the project and a joy to work with. We created a website to share our findings (mappingdetroitslavery.com). I am grateful to our web designer, Ariela Steif, and to the generous scholars who read our website draft and made suggestions for improvement: Veta Tucker, Greg Wigmore, Brian Dunnigan, and Lucy Murphy. An additional bounty of thanks goes to Michelle Cassidy, who designed the website map and worked closely with the French records to translate church register entries and create tallies and graphs, to Michelle’s husband, Alex Sin, for assisting her with the charts, and to Michelle and Emily Macgillivray, both, who aided me with this project with patience and prime research as well as translation skills for more than three years.
My brilliant colleagues at UM helped (and saved!) me at every turn, particularly Michael Witgen, who read three chapters of the manuscript; Brian Dunnigan, who shared his wealth of knowledge about Detroit history and images at various stages of the work and helped me fine tune military references; Greg Dowd, who offered clarifying, corrective, and encouraging feedback; and Martha Jones, my dear friend and toughest reader, who pushed me on the legal aspects of this history. Other generous readers whose feedback greatly improved the manuscript include Michael McDonnell, Jennifer Stinson, and my dear friend Paulina Alberto. Terry McDonald, director of the Bentley Library at UM, shared valuable sources and responded to the links between university history and slavery with absolute openness and a desire to document the facts. As former dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Terry was one of the first to encourage me to forge ahead with my book on Michigan history, a subject beyond my past regional focus on the South. I benefited from hearing reactions to and feedback on this work in talks at Indiana University, the University of Minnesota, Pomona College, Harvard University, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the University of Cincinnati, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, and the University of British Columbia. Scholars in the organization Historians Against Slavery helped me to connect past and present in my thinking. Many other people supported me through their input, interest, administrative expertise, inspiration, or quiet encouragement. They include: Stephen Ward, Beth James, Angela Dillard, Karen Marrero, Rebecca Scott, Jay Gitlin, David Blight, Walter Johnson, Christina Snyder, Jodi Byrd, Sherene Razack, Scott Morgensen, Kel Keller, Bill Hart, John Steckley, Andrew Sturtevant, Rachel Whitehead, Phil Deloria, Kristin Hass, Shawna Mazur, Roy Finkenbine, Carol Mull, Del Moyer, Robert Olender, Darryl Li, François Furstenberg, Angus Burgin, Philip Morgan, Liz Thornberry, Father Daniel Trapp, Mark Bodwen and the Burton Historical Collection staff, Lisa Brooks, Christine DeLucia, David Glassberg, Ned Blackhawk, Heather Thompson, Tim LeCain, Brett Walker, Mary Murphy, Susan Kollin, Lucy Murphy, Margaret Jacobs, Christopher Phillips, Nathan Marvin, Emily Albarillo, Wayne High, Judy Gray, Keaten North, Tammy Zill, Mark Simpson-Vos, Eric Crahan, Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, David Roediger, Patricia Montemurri, Pat Majher, Krista Ewbank and Kate Sullivan of Saint James Chapel, Melba Boyd, Katie Barkel and Brian Short of LSA Communications, Rowena McClinton, Carl Ekberg, Sharon Person, Margery Fee, my co-instructor, Joel Howell, and all of the talented graduate students in the Literature of U.S. History seminar (winter 2016), Deborah Meadows and Shirley Vaughn of the African American Cultural & Historical Museum of Washtenaw County, Kevin Walsh, Pete Kalinski and Thomas Reed of Digging Detroit, Stephanie Wichmann for French lessons (however poor my performance was!), and surely others whose names I may have regrettably omitted. Thank you to my dedicated agent, Deirdre Mullane, who supports my crazy array of projects and found a fitting home for this one. Thank you, as well, to my editor at The New Press, Marc Favreau, who saw the possibilities for a historical project like this to speak to our present pressing social and environmental issues. I am deeply grateful to the Mellon Foundation, which sponsored part of the writing of this book through a New Directions in the Humanities Fellowship, and to the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies at UM, which secured for me a teaching release to research the Michigan abolitionist Laura Smith Haviland, an investigation that eventually led to this book.
As always, my family draws me away from the page to live in this beautiful physical world and makes everything I accomplish possible. I am forever grateful to: Joseph, Nali Azure, Noa Alice, and Sylvan David Gone; Patricia Miles King; Erin, Erik, Benny, and Montroue Miles; James and Sean King; Sharon Juelfs; Rakale Collins-Quarells; Steve McCullom, Tyrone McCullom, and Deborah Banks Johnson; Vanessa, Melvin, Amanda, and Alexis Walker; Maryanna Gone DuBois; Stephanie and Baylee Rain Iron Shooter; and Joseph Azure. Thank you also to Luna for being the one by my desk-side at all odd hours.