Lessons to Learn

We are excited to learn that Tiya Miles' article Native Americans and the Underground Railroad, featured on the National Park Service website, is being used in the Freedom Seekers curriculum, a collaborative project between several organizations and schools throughout the Great Lakes.

From the project announcement: The lessons featured in this free curriculum, Freedom Seekers: The Underground Railroad, Great Lakes, and Science Literacy Activities, acknowledge the enslaved Africans who had to rely on environmental science principles in their quest for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Read the full announcement on the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant website to learn more about the Freedom Seekers curriculum, the Center for Great Lakes Literacy (CGLL), and the project collaborators.

We appreciate your feedback!

We were gratified to learn that American Studies scholar Zoya Brumberg featured our project on the University of Texas at Austin "Thinking in Public" public history website. See her post here.

I just have to say that I LOVE the work that you've done on slavery in Detroit. I am a teacher, and most of my third grade students are from Detroit. I have three different social studies groups (about 90 kids). They love the interactive map that you and your teammates made, and the stories that you have helped to uncover.

Your work has helped me to teach Michigan history more accurately, and to present stories that hold my students' attention.

Thank you and keep up the good work.

— Caitlin Gedris, teacher

Tour Detroit's History

We are delighted to share that Jamon Jordan, President of the Detroit chapter of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and founder of Black Scrolls Network History, offers tours about slavery in Detroit. We are grateful to Mr. Jordan for using our site as a resource.

We appreciate Jamon's work. Read more about Jamon and his tours here.

For more information on his slavery tour or his other tours on black history, visit Black Scroll Network History & Tours on Facebook.

Watch the video of Mapping Slavery in Detroit. The video, released in 2014, showcases the two years of work Professor Tiya Miles and a team of students spent researching the history of slavery in pre-Civil War Detroit, mapping the lives of slaves and former slaves and reclaiming an essential part of the city's history.

"Mapping Slavery in Detroit" written by Brian Short, LSA Magazine, Fall 2014.

"Mapping Black Detroit: Race, Space and Citizenship in a Pre-Civil War American City." A project led by professor Martha Jones and sponsored by the Honors Program and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

"Slavery in Early Detroit" by Tiya Miles, Michigan History Magazine, May 2013.

"Before the Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom in the Canadian-American Borderland" by Gregory Wigmore.

Visit the Wright Museum's Underground Railroad web portal.

Books

Denver Brunsman and Joel Stone eds., Revolutionary Detroit: Portraits in Political and Cultural Change, 1760-1805 (Detroit: Detroit Historical Society, 2010).

Denver Brunsman, Joel Stone, and Douglas Fisher eds., Border Crossings: The Detroit River Region in the War of 1812 (Detroit: Detroit Historical Society, 2012).

Brett Rushforth. Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

Places to Visit

Visit the Detroit Historical Museum.

Visit the North American Black Historical Museum

Historic Site Markers

St. James Episcopal Chapel Plaque on Elizabeth Denison.

Matthew Elliott historical marker

Elizabeth Denison Forth's home site registry