Historian Tiya Miles examines the stories behind a simple cotton sack passed down through three generations of Black women, highlighting how many stories have been left untold throughout history.

If you could give a care package to your daughter as she was taken away from you for good, what would be in it?

In the mid-19th century, enslaved children were routinely taken away from their enslaved parents and sold. When that happened to Rose's daughter, she gave the girl a precious bundle in a cotton sack.

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake is the saga of a family shattered by their enslavement told through the history of a timeworn cotton bag handed down through three generations of women.

Tiya Miles is a professor of history at Harvard University, where her work focuses on African American, Native American, and women's history.

In her book, Miles illuminates the role that women played in meaning-making and African American culture in the antebellum South while also demystifying the process of conducting historical research.