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

by Clint Smith

“It’s time to give to our streets the name of our heroes, because we do have heroes in Africa.” As Momar spoke, a little boy, who could have been only five or six, rounded the corner, chasing the call of his mother several paces ahead of him. Momar nodded in the boy’s direction. “It’s time to change, and the change should begin [with] the symbols, because the young boy will soon ask, ‘Who is Boufflers?’ ” As I watched that little boy turn the corner, and as I listened to Momar, I thought of how at that moment there might be little Black boys just like this one in New Orleans, running down a street named after Robert E. Lee. How there might have been little Black girls in Mississippi running down roads named after Nathan Bedford Forrest. How there might have been Black children in Georgia wandering down streets named after Jefferson Davis. I thought about the parallels between the debate in Senegal over the remnants of colonialism and the debate in the United States over the remnants of slavery. “It’s like the conversation that we’re having in the US about the Confederate monuments,” I said to Momar. “The monuments are statues of people who fought the war for the South to keep slavery, but they’re up all over. People say, ‘Why are these statues up of people who were fighting to keep slavery? That doesn’t make any sense.’ So people are trying to get them taken down now. That’s our version.” “It’s very similar,” he said, nodding. He told me about a controversy that had played...