Bingo: Diaspora. This book about American slavery ties to the African diaspora that occurred due to the transatlantic slave trade.
The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it. The history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories.”
Clint Smith’s How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, is a must read for every American. In his evocative book, Smith travels to seven locations to explore slavery from different perspectives. He talks about these locations as essential “spaces of memory.” As he travels the States, as well as to Senegal, his writing is poetic. He really tries to visualize the experience of the enslaved people whose history is embodied in each location. You feel as if you are with him, seeing what he sees, feeling what he feels. He is fantastic at getting all kinds of people to talk, even when the conversation is uncomfortable. He connects with every-day people, historians, community members, teachers, experts, and his own family to flesh out his exploration. The book is very well researched.
Monticello: Smith travels to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation in Virginia. While there are special tours that highlight the lives of the enslaved and the Hemings–traced through Sally Hemings who Jefferson abused and forced to have his children–the majority of visitors still gravitate towards Jefferson’s main house. However, the tours that focus on the enslaved people highlight “This life was only possible because of the enslaved men and women [Jefferson] held, sold, and separated; because of the people he allowed to be threatened, manipulated, flogged, assaulted, deceived, and terrorized.”
Whitney plantation: This plantation is organized solely around the slave experience. At one point, the director talks about not solely viewing enslaved people through their depredation, but in their full humanity. As Smith notes, “the Whitney stands apart by making the story of the enslaved the core of the experience.” Smith reflects on the lives of every-day people who were enslaved, and how the frequent highlighting of better known figures in Black history often obscures their stories. He writes: “This, I now realize, is part of the insidiousness of white supremacy; it illuminates the exceptional in order to implicitly blame those who cannot, in the most brutal circumstances, attain superhuman heights. It does this instead of blaming the system, the people who built it, the people who maintained it.”
Angola prison: Smith next visits Angola prison, which was originally a plantation. Once slavery was abolished, other ways were found to recreate slave conditions. One way they perpetuated the system was through convict leasing. “Southerners constantly manipulated laws to drive convictions…the laws create[d] more convicts, and those convicts were overwhelmingly Black.” By lowering barriers to conviction, Southerners ensured a mostly Black imprisoned population. They then lent out the men as cheap labor to outside entities. Even as Smith took the tour, he saw men toiling in the fields, the separation between then and now just a matter of context. The tour highlights areas of inhumanity in the prison, and disconcertingly there is even a museum gift shop (Angola is not a museum, it is still in use today).
Blandford cemetery: Blandford is a confederate cemetery with about 30,000 buried. During Smith’s visit, he observed that the people who staffed the cemetery and its well-known stained glass church on the grounds, didn’t want to reckon with the real cause for which the confederacy fought: slavery. Across the way from Blandford, there was a cemetery of Black people, including the enslaved and veterans. In the Black community cemetery there were few memorial stones and no tours. Smith then attended a Sons of Confederate Veterans event, which further emphasized the idea of the Lost Cause and the side-stepping of the issue of slavery. To his credit, Smith talks with attendees who do not see the war as he does, maintaining an even tone they don’t really deserve.
Galveston island: Smith visits a Juneteenth celebration in Galveston, Texas, which honors the day Texas was informed the emancipation proclamation (from two years before) freed enslaved people. This chapter focuses on the Black community celebrations of Juneteenth and the history of slavery in Texas. Smith writes, “The project of freedom, Juneteenth reminds us, is precarious, and we should regularly remind ourselves how many people who came before us never got to experience it, and how many people there are still waiting.”
New York City: In this chapter, Smith takes a tour about slavery in NYC. The tour emphasizes the myth of New York always being “free,” as there is a long history of slavery. The tour also highlights Black abolitionists’ essential role in the Underground Railroad. Further, even with the abolition of slavery in NY in the early 1800s, there was still a racial caste system and enslaved people still existed. Smith also visits important landmarks, such as an African graveyard and the site of a Black community in Central Park where the population was eventually turned out of their homes and their land taken over.
Gorée Island: Smith visits Senegal, and travels to an island that features the House of Slaves. Here, 30,000 people were processed onto boats headed to America and subsequently enslaved. While there are some data errors about the number of people who came through the House of Slaves (it’s been quoted as high as millions), Smith finds statistical discrepancies are not as crucial as the House being a place of reckoning and memory. Its caretaker lives on the island close by: “Living in such proximity to the house allows Eloi to fully live his commitment to ensure that that this site is a place where people are made to confront the history of the transatlantic slave trade.” A local history teacher notes that when he teaches the history of slavery, “he [is] constantly attempting to find a balance: helping his students understand the heinous implications of slavery without letting them fall into a state of paralysis.” This highlights one of the concerns of Smith’s book: emphasizing the humanity of enslaved people, their full lives.
Smith concludes with interviews with his grandparents, who lived through the Jim Crow South, and discusses his family’s history with slavery. All in all, this is an important, illuminating, and humanizing work that is an important contribution to truth-telling and confrontation of our past.