How The Word Is Passed by Clint Smith
Content warnings: racism
My goal to read 12 non-fiction books (and 16 overall) this year continues with How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With The History of Slavery Across America. This book is of particular interest because of the author: Clint Smith. The book had already been on my lengthy nonfiction TBR list (reducing said list is part of my goal this year) but learning a little more about the author promoted it to my next read after finishing Jesus and John Wayne last month.
Clint Smith and I are roughly the same age - just a few months apart. He grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, where my motherās side of the family is from. After Hurricane Katrina, which would have been during his senior year, he moved to Houston, Texas, where I currently live. He taught high school, which I currently teach. I love reading work by other educators as a good educator has to take information, make it accessible, then make it engaging. The result is seriously compelling nonfiction, and some genuinely eye opening information.
Format
The book is part travelogue, part historical deep dive, part social commentary. The chapters are broken up into a series of destinations: Thomas Jeffersonsā Monticello plantation is our first stop, followed by a few stops in Smithās home state of Louisiana (the Whitney Plantation, and Angola Prison), my own backyard of Galveston Island in Texas; New York City; Virginia; and finally Senegal to explore the West African roots of the insidious Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. There is a direct rebuke to one of the stories that is alive and well in modern day USA south of the Mason-Dixon line, but Iāll come back to that in a moment.
Smith shares the sensory details of his time physically visiting these locations. He speaks about the weather, the people he interacted with, and the feelings he experienced. For example, there is one point where Smith is at the Whitney Plantation, sharing how he feels in awe of standing in the place where enslaved people had stood, looking at the walls they looked at, separated only by time. He describes feeling the weight of years. Itās a very powerful moment, one of many as Smith invites us to step into his shoes.
His conversations with other people during his explorations are also detailed. He speaks to various tourists, locals, and tour guides on his travels, gathering a unique and diverse range of perspectives. He speaks to tour guides of many different ethnic backgrounds; some of them see their job as a moral imperative to shine a light on the evils that the United States has downplayed for centuries. To quote the author:
"The Whitney exists as a laboratory of historical ambition. An experiment of rewriting what long ago was rewritten. It is a hammer attempting to unbend four centuries of crooked nails. It is a place asking the question: how do you tell a story that has been told the wrong way for so long?ā - Clint Smith, 2021
He meets people who are genuinely shocked at what they learn, but eager to learn. These people are open to the knowledge, and some are horrified by how much history is simply downplayed. However, he also meets people who attempt to downplay the horror of slavery in the United States, and champion the Lost Cause mythology.
The Lost Cause
I mentioned earlier a rebuke of a popular lie still parroted in classrooms all across the South: The Lost Cause. This is primarily in the chapter about the Blandford Cemetery, a confederate cemetery in Virginia.
I grew up in classrooms being taught that slavery was a small part of the American Civil War. Instead, the Civil War (also taught as the War of Northern Aggression) was primarily fought over states rights. When the South ājustifiablyā tried to defend their agrarian way of life, the Union invaded and destroyed life in the South. Most southerners didnāt even own people, or their enslaved people were treated like members of the family.
This, of course, is bullshit.
What is true: many northern politicians were not abolitionists. Abolitionism was considered a radical idea. You had genuine abolitionists such as Charles Sumner, but many members of the coalition that made up the Republican party were primarily seeking to secure protections for white labor in the new Western territories. This is usually used by proponents of the Lost Cause myth to deny that the civil war was about slavery.
Smith instead quotes what the enslavers said as they seceded from the United States. Iāll provide a few of the documents, with relevant quotes and links for context:
āNo bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.ā - Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution of Confederate States.
āOur position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.ā - The Mississippi declaration of secession.
āWe hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.ā - Texas declaration of secession.
What I really appreciate is when Smith is interacting with people who believe in the Lost Cause propaganda. He relates the tension of speaking to Sons of Confederate Veterans. Tension and anxiety that I, as a white man, would not experience with the same context as the author. I have to admire the authorās courage in the pursuit of learning and trying to get Americans to think critically about the foundation our country is built on.
Final Thoughts
How The Word Is Passed is a thought provoking book. The format combines with the evocative writing to produce a truly compelling narrative. The epilogue is set during a visit Smith is taking to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC with his grandparents. He talks to them about growing up under the violence of Jim Crow. He also acknowledges how some people alive today had known the hands of grandparents who had been born into slavery. Itās disquieting to stop and realize that we are really not far off from the 13th amendment. Or how people who hurled vile insults at children simply trying to go to school are still alive and voting today.
There's so much I didn't get to, but the book is absolutely worth reading and very well written.
This book hit me so hard because I grew up in a culture steeped in the belief that we had lost the southern way of life after the Civil War. That the south would rise again and undo the injustice done to us by the Yankees. I have (now estranged) family who proudly embrace this bullshit concept of āsouthern honorā and are perfectly content with living in the racist delusional propagandized history that the post-Confederate south has created. I had long rejected the narratives I grew up with, but it is powerful reminder to see them again.
I love Texas. I love the open skies, the variety of natural environments, and the multicultural tapestry of human existence that forms the basis of our history. But to love something doesnāt mean to excuse its evils - if anything, it is imperative we acknowledge the sins done to our fellow Texans and Americans in the name of profit. Iāll end this review with a final quote from the author:
āThe 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. This history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories.ā - Clint Smith, 2021
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Thereās been a lot of heavy book reviews lately. My next one is a much more lighthearted jaunt into the realm of fantasy fiction, which I hope to post later this week.
Thank you for reading, if you made it this far~