From UUC’s Acting for Racial Justice Team

Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans in How the Word Is Passed, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of Civil War monuments and landmarks that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves. How the Word Is Passed explores the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history.  It illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view—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.

How the Word Is Passed 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. 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.

Brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith's debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be.

About Clint Smith

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He has received fellowships from New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art for Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. Born and raised in New Orleans, he received his BA in English from Davidson College and his PhD in Education from Harvard University.

Smith is also the author of two books of poetry: Counting Descent (2016) and Above Ground (2023). The UUC Antiracism Study Group recently read Above Ground which “traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world.” Reading his poems together was a major highlight of our year; every poem offered a restorative moment. 

Video Resources:

1.) Clint Smith interviewed on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert after the publication of How the Word Is Passed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6xsiEdMPw0

2.) Ted Talk: The Danger of Silence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiKtZgImdlY

3.) Facing Our Complex History Isn’t a Threat—It’s an Opportunity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NovWi-tNV4

4.) Crash Course Black American History Preview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPx5aRuWCtc&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNYJO8JWpXO2JP0ezgxsrJJ

5.) Clint Smith Reads Poems from Above Ground

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF_XdsQTfec

~ Pat Marks, member of UUC’s Acting for Racial Justice Team and the Antiracism Study Group