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

by Clint Smith

The illogic of it all appears to reveal a simple linear truth that is often lost—oppression is never about humanity or lack thereof. It is, and always has been, about power. I shared some of these parallels with Yvonne, and she nodded before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, the sort of breath I have to imagine she has taken many times. She reopened her eyes and said that she thought endlessly about this idea of physical agency being stripped from the enslaved, and how one of the most insidious parts of it all was tied to the fact that this stripping away of agency did not end after they passed away. She started talking to me about the role that enslaved people played in the fields of science and medicine, how an enslaved person’s body—dead or alive—was the site of experiments that propelled the entire medical field forward.