In 1825, Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave, Written by Himself became the first known fugitive-slave narrative in American history. Although earlier autobiographical accounts of slavery had been published in England, the genre wouldn’t fully flourish in the United States until the antislavery movement of the 1830s to 1860s, when such narratives became powerful tools of moral persuasion, exposing the brutality of bondage while asserting the writer’s humanity, intellect, and will. William Grimes wrote before that moment, introducing a distinctly American voice shaped by the horrors of enslavement in the South and the precariousness of freedom in the North. What he published was more than a memoir—it was an indictment of the contradictions that had been central to the American experiment since the Revolution itself. For 30 years, I have been researching the life and legacy of Grimes, who was my third great-grandfather. In May 2024, during my final week as a research fellow at Yale’s Beinecke Library, I made a trip to the Boston Athenaeum to see a copy of his book that …