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

The interaction between patriarchy and white supremacy also occupies a central role in the text, especially with reference to enslaved women and enslaved children. While Smith doesn’t provide an explicit definition of patriarchy, he references it in the chapter on the Whitney when he notes that enslaved women were up against “the power of the state, the power of patriarchy, the power of society” (68). As a system of domination with conceptual roots in theocratically-ordained and legally codified family structures, defined by a male head of household over women, children, and enslaved people, the integral role of patriarchy in the institution of slavery becomes clear through Smith’s discussions of enslaved women and enslaved children. 

Violence against enslaved women is most explicitly discussed in the chapter on the Whitney, but it is also referenced in the chapter on Monticello. During discussion at the Whitney, Holden emphasizes that “in order to really understand slavery, we have to understand what slavery meant for women” (67). Smith notes, “Sexual violence was ubiquitous throughout slavery, and it followed enslaved women wherever they went” (67). Discussing Jefferson and Hemings, he expresses doubt that “an association animated by ownership of one person over another” (30) can be classified as a relationship, referencing the power dynamic that would blur the distinction between Heming’s consent and coercion/domination. Smith’s attention to patriarchal power and its manifestations underscores his assertion that slavery was not about dehumanizing the enslaved; rather, it was about power, and the power depended entirely upon the human capacities of enslaved people. Hence, sexual violence against enslaved women. 

Not only did enslaved women have the human capacity for white men to assert their sexual dominance through rape, but they also had the human capacity to affirm white men’s procreative power and increase of their wealth, all central tenets of patriarchy. Thus, sexual violence against women directly relates to another exercise of patriarchal power, the domination of children. Smith notes the prevalence of enslaved children being fathered by slave owners and plantation breeding (69). In his discussion with Cummings, Smith learns that Cummings’ motivation to center the experiences of enslaved people at the Whitney was learning about the “good breeder” role in the plantation’s slave records (76). Because “children sustained and embodied the institution of slavery, especially after the formal end of the transatlantic slave trade” (62), they served as emblems of the maintenance of white supremacist power.

The impact of slavery on children emphasizes the deleterious effects of a power structure rooted in domination and subjugation. In the chapter on the Whitney, Smith cites formal and informal historians on the brutal conditions and high mortality rates of Black children (62). His visit to the African Burial Ground in New York City includes Damaras’ mention of high rates of infant mortality– including that attributed to infanticide– and the damage found in the bodies of the children exhumed and examined (229). When Niang reflects on his experience of the first visit to Gorée Island, he “kept thinking of the children ensnared in slavery’s grip” (258), unable to imagine “the fear that these children would have felt” (258). Smith connects slavery’s impact on children to Jim Crow’s impact on children, when he speaks to his grandparents, who he reimagines as children facing the threat of terror. This imagining reconfigures his entire idea of who they are as people and elicits understanding about the psychological toll that displays of white supremacy have had on them and how they navigate the world. 

Patriarchy plays an integral role in the maintenance of white supremacy. The wedding of the two systems of domination and hierarchy are evident in the ways that white men exercised both sexual and racial power over enslaved women. In the exercise of that power over enslaved women, they also managed to increase that power by producing more beings over which patriarchal power can be exercised, the children, who are both their lineage and their enslaved property. Paternal authority and economic authority become intertwined, along with sexual authority. Thus, patriarchy and white supremacy function in a reciprocal relationship, whereby each maintains and reinforces the other.

As Smith examines the ways that public history sites are reckoning with slavery, the failures of public education come to play a central role in the discussion. At several points throughout the text, Smith and others note that they have learned sanitized historical narratives that obscure the role and impact of slavery in the United States. For example, Donna, Grace, Theresa, Bates, and Smith himself all admit that their primary education emphasized Jefferson’s role as a founding father and exemplary figure, while diminishing his relationship to slavery. The idea of public education’s failures also appears in the chapter on the Whitney, as Holden, Seck, and Cummings all note how the education system has failed to account for slavery and its legacy. 

Smith also demonstrates that among older generations of Black people, there is an awareness that public education has misrepresented slavery and Black people. Johnson and Bostic at Galveston note public education’s inability to recognize Black people’s history prior to, during, and after bondage. In the epilogue, Smith’s grandmother expresses, “I didn’t learn the truth about slavery until actually I got out of school and went to college” (283). Before college, Smith’s grandmother was taught to view Africans as caricatures and less than human. By including his grandmother’s expression of the connection between slavery and perceptions of African people, Smith alludes to the global implications and proportions of white supremacy. The miseducation, then, must extend beyond the US. Smith demonstrates that miseducation in service to white supremacy is a global phenomenon, and that even schools in Senegal center European history at the expense of the rich legacies of African peoples (262). 

Smith asserts that the miseducation is a deliberate effort that relates directly to the role that children play in the perpetuation of white supremacy. In the Blandford chapter, Smith discusses the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and the role they played in seizing the public memory through not only the erection of Confederate monuments, but also through the educational system. Citing historian Karen L. Cox, Smith notes that the UDC “saw children as ‘living monuments’ who would go on to defend the principles of states’ rights and white supremacy” (161). By noting the role that white children by way of public education serve in the perpetuation of white supremacy, Smith offers a direct contrast to how Black children are regarded. Although the perpetuation of white supremacist narratives is harmful to all children, its impact on Black children is more acutely felt. Thus, Smith and his interview subjects advocate deliberate re-education efforts to counterbalance the impact on Black children. Tiernan at Galveston mentions “learning models that break down and break out of our traditional conceptions of what education should look like” (180), suggesting that not only the content but also the structure of education requires changes to empower Black children. Tiernan’s collaboration with Johnson and the Nia Cultural Center underscores her commitment to remodeling content and structure, as Johnson’s educational model includes musical and other cultural aspects meant to increase Black children’s self-esteem by situating Black history within a larger context beyond and before slavery in the Americas. 

Similarly, Seck and Kane believe that a more holistic educational model, one that includes pre-slavery history of African/Black societies, is key to helping Black children navigate the world. On going beyond the brutality of slavery in what he teaches, Seck says:

Yes, of course, they did suffer a lot. They built the foundation of the economy of this country. But let’s also go beyond all of that and see how they contributed to building the culture that all Americans are enjoying today. And also, outside in the world, the culture is everywhere. And what makes American culture so active abroad, outside, has something to do with the culture that was born on this plantation. (81)

Learning about the cultural contributions of Black African people, whether enslaved or prior to enslavement, plays a key role in repairing Black self-esteem because the idea that Africans had no culture prior to European arrival has been central to the creation and maintenance of white supremacy. One of Kane’s students, Aida, explains that in their primary education before Mariama Ba, they were taught that Europeans came to Africa for discovery and missionary work, and that what they discovered were Africa’s resources and that Africa had no culture (263). When Aida corrects her language to reflect that “no culture” was not a discovery but rather a belief that Europeans held about Africans, and when the rest of the students shake “their heads at the absurdity of the [European] sentiment” (264), it demonstrates how Kane’s more holistic model of education repairs the damage of public education by exposing the lies that have impacted their understanding of who they are. Smith himself recognizes at Galveston the difference that a more truthful narrative could have had on his childhood.

He believes that “providing young people with the language, the history, and the framework to identify why their society looks the way it does” (179) is central to giving them agency. He dreams about what it would mean “if we could extend these lessons to every child” (179), suggesting not only that the failures of public education have deleterious impacts on all children, but also that the conscious re-education effort has implications beyond Black children’s self-esteem and ability to navigate the world. The failure of public education, then, is a national and global issue that those reckoning with slavery address in their attempts to come to terms with contemporary manifestations of slavery’s legacy.