Detroit is a city whose arc is well known: a sensational, prosperous rise followed by a stunning decline that left the city bankrupt and its people with few options. But there’s much more to Detroit’s story, says author and professor Tiya Miles.

“What I wanted to do in this book was to actually look at the earliest moments of Detroit's formation and look at it in a different way to try to see the people who were actually being exploited whose labor was being stolen in the process of developing this place," says Miles. 

She's a professor at the University of Michigan, and she wrote about Detroit in her book, “The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits." Miles sat down with WNYC's Rebecca Carroll for this week's installment of our conversation series, "Reading the Reckoning."