Like children: Black prodigy and the measure of the human in America

Introduction: a Black history of prodigy, a new view on man

'Babe belov'd': Phillis Wheatley and the grammar of early American childhood

'Wilt thou bring my baby home?': Tom Wiggins and the unending Antebellum family

The anatomy of Sammy Tubbs: Black emancipation and the human's reconstruction

'Oscar Moore can tell you': unbinding brightness in the archive of a wonderful boy

'This is the end of the story no it isint': anarranging Philippa Schuyler's scrapbook archive

Epilogue : "to be held, free".