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

by Clint Smith

“We just [were taught] that Africans were nasty, bad people,” she said, a wave of shame rising in her eyes. “We didn’t know anything good about them. They were monkeys. They referred to them as monkeys swinging on trees. They lived in the Congo and they were savages and all those kinds of things. But we didn’t learn anything good about them.” She continued: “To me, in my mind, it was like another world, and everybody in Africa was bad. That’s all I ever heard. Never knowing that we were part [of it], we came over, and we didn’t come over on our own. How did we get here? I didn’t learn that we were forced here. I didn’t learn that.” She added, “You have a very deep fear …you stay in your place. You knew your place as a Black person—I’m using the word ‘Black,’ but we were called Negroes. You just knew there were things you could and could not do and you didn’t have freedom. I didn’t have a feeling of freedom that we could accomplish or achieve. It made you—I don’t want to say less than a person, or less than a human … ” She paused. “I used to have a really, really bad inferiority complex.”