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

“Both of the men inscribed words that promoted equality and freedom in the founding documents of the United States while owning other human beings. Both men built a nation while making possible the plunder of millions of people. What they gave our country, and all they stole from it, must be understood together.”

Here, Smith refers to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. He asserts that understanding these men and the foundation of the United States requires acknowledging the hypocrisy in their endorsement of freedom and equality at the same time they endorsed and benefited from the institution of slavery. The quote suggests that the reckoning with slavery necessarily involves constructing a more holistic and complex image of founding fathers and other historical figures than their deification and public images have made possible.

“What reverberated throughout was the humanity of the enslaved people– their unceasing desire to live a full life, one that would not be defined simply by their forced labor.”

Smith refers to Thorson’s intentional language around the humanity of enslaved people during one of the tours at Monticello. The quote is significant because it introduces the idea that enslaved people’s humanity was a driving factor in both slavery and its resistance. White supremacist power relied on the ability to control the human capacities of enslaved people while enslaved people’s sense of themselves as human, their own agency and autonomy, undergirded their resistance to white supremacist institutions and their impacts. Both legacies continue into the present.

“‘I think that history is the story of the past, using all the available facts, and that nostalgia is a fantasy about the past using no facts, and somewhere in between is memory, which is kind of this blend of history and a little bit of emotion. . . I mean, history is kind of about what you need to know. . . but nostalgia is what you want to hear.’”

Thorson’s quote on the distinction between history and nostalgia becomes the title quote for Smith’s chapter on Monticello. The quote introduces the idea of the relationship between memory and history, which comes to play a key role in Smith’s discussion on the reckoning with slavery.

“The voices and stories of enslaved people are the foundation of how visitors experience the Whitney. They are especially important because, apart from a single photo of an enslaved man, there are no images or stories of the many people who once lived on the plantation itself.”

The Whitney’s centering of the voices and stories of enslaved people is what Smith sees as setting the Whitney apart from other plantation tourist sites. While the quote doesn’t explicitly mention the role of memory in the construction of the historical narrative, it alludes to it because the memory of enslaved people’s descendants is central to the Whitney’s narrative construction.

“If you can’t see them for being people, you can’t see me as a person. I want to get you to see them, because I know as a Black woman what my challenges in society have been. It’s stemming from this history, so if I can’t get you to see them, you can’t see the person standing in front of you.”

Yvonne Holden suggests that understanding the experiences of enslaved people is key to understanding the experiences of Black people in the present. Smith’s inclusion of Holden’s quote continues his emphasis on enslaved people’s humanity and connections between past and present, both of which are central ideas to Smith’s discussion.

“It seemed that much of the museum, almost relentlessly, depicted images of violence. And yet, paradoxically, its curators also sought to couple this violence with a narrative of progress, as if to show how bad the prison used to be and tout how incredibly safe it was now.”

Smith succinctly articulates Angola’s approach to their historical narrative– to sensationalize violence while simultaneously emphasizing progress. Together, they reinforce white supremacy by justifying continued violence against Black people and promoting the idea of white benevolence, even as the violence continues.

“The chairs and glass turned this room into a spectacle of state-sanctioned, taxpayer-funded death. The table was a reminder of how fragile our bodies are, how little is needed to extinguish a life.”

Smith points out the continuation of the legal codification and public funding of violence against Black people. By noting that the death penalty and mass incarceration are state-sanctioned, Smith draws a parallel between past and present, since slavery and other iterations of white supremacist violence have also been legally sanctioned.

“White supremacy enacts violence against Black people, but also numbs a whole country– Black and white– to what would in any other context provoke our moral indignation.”

Smith expresses that white supremacy is both violent and desensitizing. This quote follows his discussion of how the present-day mass incarceration of Jewish people at what used to be a concentration camp would incite global moral outrage, but the mass incarceration of Black people at what used to be a plantation does not. By implicating both Black and white people in their lack of moral indignation, Smith suggests, as he does throughout the text, that reckoning with slavery is not limited to one race or the other. It must be a collective effort.

“Lee’s army saw Black soldiers as participating in a slave revolt, an insurrection of the most nightmarish proportions that was being actively supported by Lincoln and the US government. The Confederate government put in place policies that officially considered Black soldiers slaves participating in an insurrection, and thus subject to re-enslavement or execution. Their white officers, as enablers of the insurrection, could also be executed.”

This quote is significant because it points out that slavery was the central subject of the Civil War. The impulse to maintain slavery was so strong among Confederate supporters that they were even willing to kill other white people in its defense. The quote also challenges the public, heroic image of Lee by pointing out the racism that undergirded his command of the Confederate Army.

“There is no shortage of documentation demonstrating that the Southern states seceded and began sowing the seeds of war in order to defend slavery. To look at primary source documents and convince yourself that the central cause of the war was anything other than slavery requires a remarkable contortion of history.”

Smith emphasizes that slavery was the central subject of the Civil War, and that historical documentation reveals as much. The Lost Cause narrative distorts history as its creators and advocates cling to the idea that it was a matter of defending states’ rights without referencing the right that the Confederacy sought to defend–the right to maintain slavery within their borders.

“White Southerners’ commitment to the Confederate cause was not predicated on whether or not they owned slaves. The commitment was based on a desire to maintain a society in which Black people remained at the bottom of the social hierarchy.”

Smith challenges the notion that the Civil War couldn’t have been about slavery because not all Confederate soldiers, or not even all white Southerners, were slave owners. Smith alludes to the fact that slavery and white supremacy are so deeply intertwined that the defense of one is the defense of the other. Confederate supporters didn’t have to have any ties to slavery (although most of them did) in order to rally behind the effort to perpetuate the institution. The presence of the institution ensured their social power as white people whether they themselves owned slaves or not.

“‘No, we were thriving communities and nations and did amazing things before we were found by the white man. […] We did so many things that it didn’t mean we came here dumb and we had to learn somebody else’s way to become truly educated and actualized. I wanted them to see what they brought to the table, and to try to maintain and preserve who they are, and not to think that in order to be successful, I have to let go of my cultural stuff and adopt somebody else’s.’”

Sue Johnson’s educational model for her students at the Nia Cultural Center emphasizes that Black history begins before bondage in the Americas. Johnson believes that the extension of historical study to an era prior to slavery not only reconnects Black Americans and West African peoples, and it also boosts Black children’s self-esteem by demonstrating the value and connectivity of Black cultures.

“‘They’re not going to tell you the real story of how you went and you fought in every war that this country has ever fought, including the Civil War, where the most people have died in this country than in every war we’ve fought in. They’re not going to tell you those things. They’re not going to put that in the history books, because they want to glamorize the Confederacy.’”

Jackie Bostic points out that the obfuscation of Black people’s experience in the public historical narrative stems directly from white people’s investment in maintaining a certain image of themselves and their ancestors. By noting that Black people have fought in every war, Bostic suggests that Black people’s integral role in building the country goes beyond enslavement. It alludes to the hypocrisy of a government that claims to care about its veterans when many of its veterans have historically and presently been treated as second-class citizens.

“The project of freedom, Juneteenth reminds us, is precarious, and we should regularly remind ourselves how many people who came before us never got to experience it, and how many people are still waiting.”

Carrying forward an idea presented by a number of his interview subjects in Galveston, Smith acknowledges that while celebration is integral to Juneteenth, understanding the history behind the holiday reminds people that bondage has been and continues to be a reality for people in the United States. This quote also alludes to the fact that conscious effort is what has moved the project of freedom forward, but there are also counterposing and deliberate efforts to curtail freedom. Juneteenth is a reminder that continued conscious effort is required to maintain and advance the freedom that Juneteenth celebrates.

“‘A lot of the information you hear today is going to make you feel very, very uncomfortable. That’s okay. . . That’s what learning and development is as a human being, being uncomfortable. Some of the information may challenge your educational background, as well as your personal beliefs. That’s all right as well.’”

Like the staff at Monticello and the Whitney, Damaras Obi acknowledges that the information on her tour may challenge personal belief systems, public education historical narratives, and the sense of comfort that has stemmed from both. By reassuring her audience that the discomfort and challenges are normal parts of the learning process, she encourages them to remain open and receive the information. Smith’s inclusion of Obi’s quote suggests that he believes an essential component of reckoning with slavery is the willingness to sit with discomfort and challenges to one’s sense of self.

“In the nineteenth century, Black people lived in fear that at any moment a slave catcher could snatch them or their children up, regardless of status or social position. In the twenty-first century, Black people live in fear that at any moment, police will throw them against a wall, or worse, regardless of whether there is any pretense of suspicion other than the color of their skin.”

By drawing the parallel between 19th and 21st century Black experience, Smith demonstrates that white supremacist violence that incites fear in Black people has not diminished, but merely transformed over two centuries. The parallel between police violence and slave catcher violence alludes to the fact that the modern-day police force has roots in slave patrolling, further emphasizing the connection between slavery and incarceration that Smith has already drawn in the chapter on Angola.

“I thought of all that lay beneath the layers of grass and soil and stone– the history, the stories. If it were not for the federal law mandating assessment prior to construction, this burial ground might have been forgotten beneath the pavement, lost under the shadow of skyscrapers. I couldn’t help but wonder how many more buried, forgotten memorials there were across the country.”

Smith acknowledges that the history of slavery is embedded in the entirety of US land. This quote also suggests that legislation can be of service to reckoning with slavery since the federal law required the assessment of the land that led to the discovery of enslaved people’s remains.

“I had walked across this city so many times before, but now its untold history was unraveling all around me. Every corner cast a shadow of what it had once been. New York was unique in that, like Damaras had shared, it presented itself to me as a place ahead of its time. The pretense of cultural pluralism told a story that was only half true. New York economically benefited from slavery, and the physical history of enslavement– the blood, the bodies, and the buildings constructed by them– was deeply entrenched in the soil of this city.”

Like Obi, Smith pushes back against the “good guy” image and narrative that New York has created for itself. He mentions the idea of cultural pluralism because it has been central to the “good guy” narrative, even though the reality of Black people’s experience in New York, as past and present circumstances have indicated, has been one where Black culture and embodiment have been vilified and subjected to white supremacist violence. This quote, again, points to the idea that the history of slavery is embedded in the entire country, not just the South.

“The Statue of Liberty is an extension of a tradition that seems to embody the contradictions in America’s promise, and a reminder that its promises have not always been extended to us.”

Smith’s discussion of American symbolism points to how the experiences of Black people in America have exposed the hypocrisy of American ideals. What’s also suggested here is that because Black people’s experience exposes that hypocrisy, Black people have been the driving force in propelling America’s reality towards those ideals. As Smith recounts the history of the Statue’s narrative and design, he notes that abolition, and therefore America being pushed towards its ideals, was central to the original concept.

“I’m also seeing that we have a link with Black Americans and they come from Africa. And if you see a Black American and his ancestors had the misfortune to be captured by the slave master, here in Africa, we should not say that we were lucky. No, we were not lucky. It’s a tragedy. It’s a real tragedy.”

In Niang’s recognition of the link between Black Americans and Africans, he alludes to the disruption of Black family and community that is a central theme in Smith’s analysis. This quote underscores the sense of shame among Africans that he and Kane’s students acknowledge about the recognition of Africa’s involvement in the slave trade.

“In both situations, in slavery and colonization, what you have is a system of plunder. First, in slavery, we have a plunder of human beings. Africa had been ripped of its people. And colonization is a plunder of natural resources. We have been exploited by the colonizers. On both systems, what you have is a plunder system.”

Kane articulates that slavery and colonization are intimately linked as systems that have ravaged Africa’s people and resources. For Kane, recognizing this link is essential to understanding Africa’s present-day economic situation. This quote provides an example of how Kane’s educational model is holistic in that it makes connections among various facets of history, rather than compartmentalizing them as separate, unrelated phenomena. Furthermore, by drawing the connection between slavery and colonialism, and the impact of their conglomeration, Kane links descendants of people enslaved in the Americas and present-day Africans, suggesting that collective effort against white supremacy can be carried out in collaboration among those people.

“There are the gaps that exist inside me, a Black man in America unable to trace my roots past a certain point in history. Whose lineage beyond the plantations where my ancestors were held remains obscured by the smog of displacement. They are the gaps that I am trying to understand, the gaps I am trying to fill.”

Smith calls attention to the break in lineage, i.e., the family and community disruption that resulted from slavery. He also suggests, like Johnson, Kane, and Seck, that his lineage precedes the period of enslavement, even if historical circumstances disallow him to trace that lineage. By concluding the Gorée chapter with his intention to fill the gaps created by slavery, he implies that an exploration of African heritage, however it can be carried out, may be a valuable strategy for reckoning with slavery.

“The 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.”

Smith underscores the point that the history of slavery is embedded in all of the US, not just a particular region. In addition, slavery is not merely a past phenomenon, but an institution that shaped contemporary society. Having come to understand the importance of public memory in the reckoning with slavery, he concludes that the memory of slavery must necessarily be a part of how people navigate contemporary society and understand the history and laws of the United States.