How The Word Is Passed by Clint Smith

This is one of the best books that I read this year. The book travels the United States city by city, and takes us on an unforgettable tour that seeks to look clearly at our past and the role of slavery in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves. It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. I was unaware that there is now a tour that focuses on the role of slaves in Jefferson's life that is not about the gloried past of the South but rather about reckoning with Jefferson as a man. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation–turned–maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers. A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted. This is both scholarly and moving, filled with stories that bring things to life and are memorable. Do not miss it.