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

by Clint Smith

was born and raised in a city filled with statues of Confederate soldiers. White men on pedestals and Black children playing beneath them—where Black people played trumpets and trombones to drown out the Dixie song that still whistled in the wind. In my hometown of New Orleans there are at least a hundred streets, statues, parks, and schools named after Confederate figures, slave owners, and defenders of slavery. For decades Black children have walked into buildings named after people who thought of them as property. My own middle school, Lusher, is named after Robert Mills Lusher, a Confederate and former Louisiana superintendent of education who fought against desegregation and who believed in “the supremacy of the Caucasian race.” Every time I returned home I would drive on streets named for those who thought of me as chattel. “Go straight for two miles on Robert E. Lee.” “Take a left on Jefferson Davis.” “Make the first right on Claiborne.” Translation: “Go straight for two miles on the general whose troops slaughtered hundreds of Black soldiers who were trying to surrender.” “Take a left on the president of the Confederacy, who understood the torture of Black bodies as the cornerstone of their new nation.” “Make the first right on the man who allowed the heads of rebelling slaves to be mounted on stakes in order to prevent other slaves from getting any ideas.” So much of the story we tell about history is really the story that we tell about ourselves, about our mother...