Reckoning with America’s history of slavery

This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. Cooley. After the statue of Robert E. Lee near downtown New Orleans was taken down from its sixty foot pedestal in twenty seventeen, Clint Smith became obsessed with how slavery is remembered and reckoned with. and with teaching himself all the things he wishes someone had taught him long ago. Smith is from New Orleans, where at least a hundred streets, statues, parks, and schools are named after Confederate figures, slave holders, and defenders of slavery.

his nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed, A reckoning with the history of slavery across America. won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and was on the New York Times Book Review's ten best books of twenty twenty one. For the book he visited eight places to better understand the distortions in the way the history of slavery was taught to him and to most children, as well as the ways many Americans deceive themselves about that history.

Smith earned a PhD in education from Harvard. He also is a poet and a staff writer at the Atlantic. His book Counting Descent won the twenty seventeen Literary Award for Best Poetry Book. From the Black Caucus of the Americas.

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