Author clint smith. His new book is how the word is passed the reckoning with a history of sleepy across america. You might know him through his writing in the atlantic or his youtube series crash course in black American History. Mr. Smith, you were raised in new orleans. What was your life like . Mr. Smith it was great. It is the best city in the world. It is one of those places you do not fully appreciate until you are not there anymore. I was 17 years old when Hurricane Katrina hit new orleans. This week marked the 17th anniversary of katrina. It was a surreal moment for me to reflect on the fact this was half a lifetime ago. In so many ways, it feels like yesterday. I have been thinking a lot about how new orleans shaped me as a husband, a father, a writer, a person. But also thinking about all the ways my life was offended in ways i do not think i have fully processed yet. I just wrote about this incredible documentary, katrina babies, and done by a young man will he is similar age to me but 13 when katrina hit. He made a documentary about the way young black children who were children when katrina happened, who did not necessarily have the language or vocabulary to express how they were experiencing this trauma, he is giving them a platform to do a retrospective and look back and explain what that felt like and how it has continued to impact than the last 17 years. Thinking about new orleans and my relationship to it, but even beyond katrina and my entire life before that was wonderful. It was a fun, vibrant, dynamic place unlike anywhere else in the world. Were you in new orleans when katrina hit or had you gotten out . Mr. Smith part of what people do not always understand is if you are evacuating for hurricanes, we did that on an annual basis. It was rite of passage for living in new orleans. This is what you do every year. You pack some clothes, you go to your aunt poor uncles house, a hotel, or you decide to stay. For so many years they said there was going to be the big one. You would come back and they would be minimal damage. Branches on the ground, a window busted. But no one was prepared for what was going to happen. We were in houston, texas. I was at my aunt and uncles house. It was surreal and unsettling to be sitting on the couch as a 17yearold watching cnn and seeing the grocery store, my church, my school, my neighborhood submerged under 8, 9, 10 feet of water. That was the experience of so many people. 80 of the city was underwater. It was something that people from new orleans, you know, our lives are bifurcated by the storm. There was life before the storm and life after the storm. Hit is the marker in time we often use. Was that before the storm or after the storm . I imagine it will be like that for a long time. Your new book, how the word is passed, has a new orleans connection. Mr. Smith it began in 2017 when i was watching confederate statues come down in new orleans. Statues of Jefferson Davis, robert e. Lee. I was thinking about what it meant i grew up in a majority black city in which they were more homages to the slavers than the slaves. To the grocery store, i had to go to Jefferson Davis parkway. My parents still live on the street of someone who owned 150 slaves. These are reflected of the stories people tell and has shaped the narratives. Those narratives shape policy and policy shapes the material and conditions of peoples lives. Not to say if you take down the 60 foot statue of robert e. Lee you erase the wealth gap, but we recognize the ecosystem of ideas that give us an understanding and appreciation for what has happened throughout American History and the way communities have been disproportionately and intentionally harmed throughout america history. I was looking around portlands and thinking about, what other ways i was taught about his history . I realize new orleans was the busiest and largest slave market in the country at the mouth of the mississippi river. I had never been taught about it in a way that was commensurate with the impact it had on the city, this day, the country. I went out on an exploration across the country where i traveled to different historical sites, memorials, museums, prisons, plantations, cities, cemeteries, trying to get a sense of how different places across the country, including new orleans, tell the story of their own relationships. Do they acknowledge it honestly . Do they run from it . Do they do something in between . Over the course of four or five years i traveled across the country and the ocean to find those answers. In your first 17 years in new orleans, did you think about the monuments . Were you aware of them and what they stood for . Mr. Smith i was aware of them. I dont think i was i was certainly not aware of the history the represented. That is part of the success of the lost cause. This idea that, after the civil war while the union won the war, the confederacy won the war of ideas. For generations following the end of the civil war people were talking about the distorted sense of what the world was about. There was a concerted effort, state sanctioned effort, to prevent people from understanding the dynamics of what the war was about, what people were fighting over. I remember growing up and, again, youre in the city 60 , 70 black and the biggest statue is robert e. Lee. Not having the full sense of what this man represented. The iconography of the confederacy was so ubiquitous across the country. I had never been taught about the declarations of confederacy session. In 1860 and 1861, as states were seceding, they were outlining what the war was being fought over and why this was happening. Mississippi in 1861 says, our position is identified. The institution of slavery, the greatest material interest in the world. They are not vague about why they are seceding or the wars being fought. But i was never taught about it in those terms. They kind of became part of the landscape of the city. I think about the sort of cognitive dissonance of so many of my fondest memories as a kid being literally beneath the shadow of these men who fought a war, predicated on maintaining and expanding the institution of slavery. My mom and siblings and i would go to city park, which is our central park in new orleans, and feed the ducks. The statue you passed until a few years ago was beauregard. He ordered the first shots to be fired at fort sumter. That exists all across the city. My middle school was named after someone who was an avid confederate in support of the segregation of schools. And so, part of what happened for me was i wanted to write a book that would have been helpful for the 16yearold version of me. I wanted to write a book i remember being a kid and feeling a sense of intellectual and social and psychological paralysis being told the things that were wrong with black people. Sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit, and not having the language to push back. Not having the language or sociology to more effectively contextualize why new orleans looked at the weighted. Why one part looked one way and another part looked another way. If nobody teaches you the history, you fall into the trap of thinking the reason one part looks one way and another looks another way is because the people, rather than what has been done to those communities generation after generation. Part of the object of the book was to write the book that i felt like i needed when i was in American History. How the wood has passed is the name of clints new book. If you would like to join in, eastern and central time zones and mountain and pacific numbers on your screen. You have a robust social media account. How did that develop and what do you use it for . Mr. Smith it has evolved over time. Initially, i was using it because i was in grad school. I was getting my phd and for most phd students your life is 12 hours a day in the library. One of the things i was happening was i started graduate school in 2014, the same week mike was killed in ferguson. You think about the beginning of the black lives matter movement. Trayvon martin in 2012. The second wave of its beginning was the death of Michael Brown in ferguson following the succession of people killed. We were in a moment where people were looking for that affirmation of Historical Context with which to make sense of why we saw some of the things happening that were happening. I was in graduate School Getting my phd and study, broadly, racial inequality. I was reading these books giving me new language and new frameworks, ideas with which to make sense of what was around me. Wide police the pardons existed the way they did. Why inequality was so profound in different urban cities. New language and framework with which to understand how the history of Public Policy decisions created the inequality we see in the cities. Part of what i started doing on twitter was i had these threads where i was talking about the books that were in conversation with the moment we found ourselves in. You begin to editorialize and it becomes many blogs mini blogs. And then i began to turn those threads into more thoughtful pieces. It is interesting because my journey to becoming a journalist and writer begins with those threads in my Little Library in the early days of graduate school. I think people were hungry for that information. Now i mostly use it to talk about arsenal, my Favorite Soccer Team in london. But that is how it began. How the what is passed has been named one of the top 10 books of last year. It won the circle award for nonfiction. Where does that phrase come from . Mr. Smith how the word is pas sed . The first chapter is about monticello. I think the jefferson, in many ways, in the cognitive dissonance and contradictions of the american project. America is a place that provided unimaginable opportunities for many across generations in ways their ancestors could not imagine. It has also done so at the direct expense of millions of people who have been subjugated and depressed. Both of those are the story of america. It is not one over here and one over there, they are deeply entangled. Jefferson similarly embodies the contradictions of america. He wrote one of the most Important Documents in the history of the western world and enslaved over 600 people over the course of his lifetime, including four of his own children. He wrote all men are created equal and in his book he wrote black people are inferior to whites in body and mind. He said a slave was incapable of love the same way white people were. They could not sustain complex emotion. He talked about phyllis wheatley, the first black woman to publish a book of poetry and set her work was below the dignity of criticism. It was not worth in with because black people did not have, to his mind, the dexterity necessary to create works of art. I thought about that and i was thinking about how so much of what i learned about jefferson growing up did not include other pieces of history. I thought about how that is a reflection of the way which we talk and failed to talk about American History. For so long we only told one part of the story and for so long, until recently, have left large parts of the story out. I went to monticello to get a sense of, how is this institution that carries the responsibility of conveying the legacy of jefferson, how is this institution communicating who jefferson was . Are they communicating the totality of who jefferson was . Part of what they are doing in monticello is including the narrative of the descendants of people who were enslaved. One of the descendants had this moment in the research i was doing where he said talking about the oral histories passed down from people once enslaved. He said, this is how the word is passed down. Is one of those moments where you come across a sentence, like, this is it. This is the embodiment of the project. That is where came from and i felt lucky to spend time in monticello with the historians, the descendants, and monticello is a place that has done a lot of important work. It reflects the way telling the story one way for such a long time does not mean you have to tell it that way. And how they tell the story of who jefferson was with the enslaved folks held monticello is different than how they told it 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago. That is important because these institutions are not stagnant. They can engage in reflection and retrospective of themselves and think about, what are the ways in which we are effectively doing our work . What are the ways we can do it better . There has been quite a kerfuffle at James Madisons home about how to present history and where the right balance is. In your view, where is the right balance . Mr. Smith i think you have to be honest of the totality of who someone was. I remember when i was at monticello, i was on a tour with a guy named david. This older white guy, widebrimmed brown hat, professor looking. This was the slavery at monticello tour. The way it operates as they tell there is a slavery tour, a house tour, a horticultural tour, the hemmings family tour. Jefferson was a dynamic person and had a lot of different interests and different facets to his work in personality. He was outlining, as i did before, so many of the moral inconsistencies of jeffersons work that consisted in his letters. Our member watching these two women, donna and grace, listening to david talk about the things jefferson wrote about black people in his writing. Their faces were wilting, mouths hung agape. They were unsettled. I went up to the matter and said, i would love to hear about what you are feeling. I always member grace turned to me and said, man, he really took the shine off the guy. I had no idea monticello was a plantation. I had no idea jefferson owned slaves. These are folks who bought plane tickets, got hotel rooms and came to the site is a pilgrimage to see the home of one of the founding fathers, and get had no idea he was an enslaver. It made it clear to me there are millions of people who do not understand the history of slavery. I think part of what monticello and part of what is out of these places and plantations, madisons plantation, washingtons plantation, they are, in different ways, grappling with how to talk about the things these men contributed to the american project. While also not shirking away from the moral responsibility to also talk about the ways these men were inconsistent with the very principles they were espousing. Lets hear from our viewers. Clint smith is our guest, how the word is passed is the name of the book. Go ahead and make your comment or question. I would like to know if you are familiar with the wellestablished black doctor at tulane university, James Puckett carter. He wrote racketeering in medicine. Dr. Carter died about a year after katrina and on his website or email to me i had to simplify his sentences in racketeering in medicine it shows his home and though water was up to the window edge and a fire was inside. According to his wife, he felt that is what did him in a year later. He wrote racketeering in medicine and he was an ivy league doctor. Are you familiar with him . Host thank you. Mr. Smith i am not familiar but tulane is the name of the late tulane who owned enslaved people. This is how ubiquitous it is across new orleans and in so many cities across the country. The names of people who were slavers or supported the confederacy or supported School Segregation or in favor of jim crow. Their names are emblazoned across the buildings and museums and monuments all across places like new orleans and places throughout not only the south, but across the country. Host so, in a case like that, should the name of the university be changed . Mr. Smith i think it is a casebycase basis. I think each university, each city, each town, each community has a responsibility to grapple with the competing legacies that exist within any statue or name that exists. I will not sit here and pretend it is an easy answer. We take down all the statues of jefferson or we take down all the statues i think there are different gradations. For me, confederate iconography and names are the low hanging fruit of this debate. There is no reason at all that a confederate statues, a statue of someone who supported a war that was explicitly predicated on expanding and maintaining the institution of slavery and theres analyst evidence that they wrote, the state and individuals responsible for pushing these policies through that this is why they were creating the confederacy. The idea we would lift someone up on a statute or have a school named after them or street named after them when they were not only treasonous to the cause of the united states, but also were fighting a war to keep 4 Million People enslaved and their descendants enslaved, to me runs counter to any notion of justice or what we espouse of the american project that we are tending to move toward. I think if you want to have a statue of robert e. Lee in your backyard, thats fine. That your private property. Its strange, but your prerogative. But the fact that taxpayer dollars would maintain the statues and keep them erected in front of courthouses, parks, traffic circles, those for me should be removed. When you get into conversations of jefferson and washington, founding fathers, each community has to make that decision on an individual basis. What that looks like in richmond is different from new orleans, which is different from what it might look like in georgia, which is different from what it would look like in south carolina. It depends on the context and history of those communities. Host this is a case where a lot of the statues were not put up right after the civil war. They were put up at the turnofthecentury. Mr. Smith there were two primary spikes. Many of them were put up in the early 20th century and many of them were put up in the midst of the civil rights movement. If you look at the chart of time, each of these spikes were synonymous with moments in which black people were gaining a larger set of access to political, social and economic mobility. And so, the role of the statues was not simply to commemorate, you know, people fighting a war to protect their communities or protect their families or the south. They were put up explicitly as signs of terror. They were put up explicitly as a way to communicate and demonstrate to the black populace in these places what the state sanctioned views, what the history, who was in charge, who holds the power. I think all about the Tennessee State legislature. In the capitol, there is a bust of Nathan Bedford forrest taken down a few years ago. This was put up in 1978. Nathan Bedford Forrest was the first member of the ku klux klan. He led the massacre of black Union Soldiers who had already surrendered. He is someone who was ardent in his beliefs of white supremacist as he. And this bust of him was put in the Tennessee State legislature in 1978. That 1870 not 1878. There is no way to understand that is like when i talk about the relationship between Public Policy and symbolism. Putting up a bust of the first grand wizard of the ku klux klan and Confederate Army general, there is no way to understand that without having it reflect a set of ideologies, priorities and policies that would be pushed and espoused and advocated by people whose interest is, in some ways, represented by the head of this man they intentionally placed in the space. Host lets hear from don from new orleans. Go ahead. Caller love the book festival, love cspan and the library of congress peered we need to have more books to read. I have the issue of slavery, and we talk about Thomas Jefferson and his dominance of the african people, in the dominance of universities. The endowments of universities. These endowments support scholarships, fellowships, professorships, and then we talk about the issue of slavery. The pilgrims came over on ships. The matilda was a slave ship. The issue of transcontinental slave trade and the issue of ships host i apologize. We are getting tight on time. What is your question . Caller my question is, when we talk about these president s and statues, the statues of these White Supremacists and the statutes, the laws there representing. Virginia has had eight president s out of 46 and they are the leader of the enslavement of african people. Host we are going to leave it there. Clint, anything you want to respond to . Mr. Smith i think part of what exists is a fundamental understanding from the larger american public. Not even a misunderstanding but lack of understanding of the origins of the african slave trade. I think part of the way we are taught about slavery has historically been on such a Service Level to the extent it is engaged with at all. We find ourselves in a moment where, because of projects like the 1619 project in black lives matter that helped usher in a new set of scholarship and books and ideas not that the ideas themselves are new, but put into the public consciousness as an effort to tell a fuller story of American History. For many people, that represents a crisis of identity. That represents a crisis of self. For so Many Americans over the last 10 years the, way in which we talk about racism and the way we understand the history of racism is that it is not only interpersonal but systemic. One that is embedded in systems and structures. It also demands that we tell a fuller, more holistic story of america in ways that, look at some of our founding myths. They challenge the ideas we have a spouse as being synonymous with the american project. We include the perspectives of people whose voices have not always been included. That challenges the rendering of america many people have had. So many people in this countrys sense of themselves is tied to the story of america that is not include the voices now being included. When you ask people to learn more about slavery or learn more about indigenous genocide, to learn more about the chinese exclusion or the range of Different Things this country has done that have not always been part of our Public Discourse around with this country has been. For many people that is not only a challenge to the country but themselves. They see it as an existential crisis and i think that is why we see such vibrant pushback in the form of state legislatures trying to prevent people learning about the history that explains why our society looks away does. School boards preventing teachers from teaching books that help share perspectives that have not always been included in our larger Public Discourse and consciousness. It is important what so many people are experiencing is a sense of fear because their version of america, the story they so long believed, is being recognized as being an incomplete story. For so many people, when you say the story of america we have told for so long is incomplete, you are on tethering something that has anchored them in their identity and sense of self and community for a long time. Host clint smith, his new book is called how the world was of what how the word is passed. He also appeared on book tv in the past. A couple of years ago he was leaving a Reading Program at the d. C. Jail. Book tv covered it. It is a fascinating two hours. Mr. Smith and his partner leading some of the prisoners in a book club. I recommend that to you to watch online if you get the chance