Seth Rockman discusses his book, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery which tells one of the biggest stories of early American history through everyday consumer goods: shoes manufactured in Massachusetts for the use of enslaved people in Mississippi, for example, or woolen dresses stitched in Rhode Island for enslaved women in South Carolina to wear. In following these goods from the North where they were made to the Southern Plantations where they were used, the geography of slavery and freedom takes on a new meaning.

Seth Rockman is the George L. Littlefield Professor of American History at Brown University.