Two recent books employ inventive approaches to read against the grain of the archive of slavery produced by those who built and benefited from it.

Susan Eva O’Donovan argues that the political building blocks of freedom were inherent in the project of slavery itself.

Enslaved Americans — working as teamsters, as boatmen, as ladies’ maids and valets — transformed themselves into a powerful political force long before the Civil War, beginning the process of moving t...