How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America is a narrative nonfiction text written by Clint Smith and published in 2021 by Little, Brown, and Company. Smith visits historical sites in the American South, New York City, and Dakar, Senegal, to assess how the sites deal with the topic of slavery. As he visits each site, he gains important insights about the elements involved in reckoning with slavery, not just as a past phenomenon, but as a foundational element of the United States whose legacy has continued to manifest in contemporary society. Smith’s discussion includes description of the sites, personal reflection, interviews with site staff and visitors, and scholarly citations to contextualize and support the narrative that he builds through the descriptive, experiential, and dialogical elements of the writing. Each chapter title includes the name of the site and a quote from an interview subject that conveys the site’s dominant approach to reckoning with or evading slavery in their historical narrative. 

Content Warning: The source material and this guide include discussions of slavery and racism.

Summary

Smith opens the book with a short Prologue in the city of New Orleans where he was born and raised. With the Prologue, Smith establishes his personal investment in reckoning with slavery, in addition to suggesting that it is not merely a personal effort, but collective as the history of slavery is embedded in the whole United States. The next two chapters on Monticello Plantation and The Whitney Plantation focus on the experiences of enslaved people. While the Monticello Plantation points out the tension between the experiences of enslaved people and the image of the US and its key historical figures, in an effort to create a more holistic narrative, the Whitney emphasizes that the voices and stories of enslaved people are central to public history.

The next two chapters on Angola Prison and Blandford Cemetery demonstrate different approaches to the evasion of slavery, as well as commonalities that undergird the different approaches. With Angola Prison, Smith emphasizes the way that white people absolve themselves of any responsibility for slavery and its legacy by acting as if it were merely a past phenomenon over which they have no control in the present. The sense of absolution is underscored by the idea of progress. Smith’s experience at Blandford Cemetery suggests a different approach that relies on a commitment to white emotional comfort and mythical narrative, rather than factuality or consideration of Black people’s discomfort in the face of white supremacy. 

The chapter on Galveston Island focuses on the celebration and history of Juneteenth. It centers how a predominantly Black community, as opposed to a public history institution, such as Monticello or the Whitney, chooses to tell the story of slavery. The dominant idea here is that Black experience includes both tragedy and triumph, as well as the creation of symbols that connote both. With the chapters on New York City and Gorée Island, Smith expands the reckoning beyond the American South. The chapter on New York City not only implicates the American North in the institution of slavery, thereby making the reckoning a national issue, but it also emphasizes the global scale of slavery. Thus, the visit to Gorée Island in Dakar, Senegal underscores this point about slavery’s global nature, at the same time that it links it to another system of white supremacy, colonialism. In addition, the chapter on Gorée connects the Black American plight to the West African plight. 

Smith closes the book with an Epilogue in which he interviews his maternal grandfather and his paternal grandmother after a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. In the Epilogue, readers find Smith’s conclusions about reckoning with slavery, namely that public memory and collective will are key elements.