Location
7:00 Book Discussion
(Zoom Meeting Opens at 6:45)
Everyone is welcome to join our discussion, even if you did not have time to read the book.
Join LWV ABC Book Club Zoom Meeting
- Meeting ID: 924 7032 1268
- Passcode: 854158
- Dial in: +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) or +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
HOW THE WORD IS PASSED A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (2021)
By Clint Smith
How the Word Is Passed, is a cross-country exploration of slavery remembrance by the poet and Atlantic staff writer Clint Smith. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Smith visits nine places that memorialize the legacy of slavery in order to understand how each reckons with its relationship to the history of American slavery. Interweaving scholarship and personal observation with interviews of residents, tourists, scholars, tour guides, and museum officials, Smith examines how “the word” about our history with slavery is passed on to us.
Among the places visited by Smith are Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Plantation in Virginia; Whitney Plantation in Louisiana; Angola, former plantation-turned-maximum-security prison, in Louisiana; Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers; a Juneteenth celebration in Galveston; the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan and the House of Slaves on Goree Island in Senegal
Each chapter is a portrait of a place but also of the people in that place—those who live there, work there, and are the descendants of the land and of the families who once lived on it. They are people who have tasked themselves with telling the story of that place outside traditional classrooms and beyond the pages of textbooks. They are, formally or informally, public historians who carry with them a piece of this country’s collective memory. They have dedicated their lives to sharing this history with others. And for this book, many of them have generously shared that history with me.– Clint Smith
- A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021
- A Time 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2021
- A Smithsonian Magazine Best Book of 2021
Library Availability: Many books, ebooks and audiobooks available at Hennepin and Anoka County libraries.
