How The Word Is Passed: Land, Buildings, Time + Space.

“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.” – Clint Smith

How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With The History of Slavery Across America was the book I never knew I needed. Having read Down Along With That Devil’s Bones by Connor Towne O’Neill, I kind of felt like I wouldn’t need to read this one very fast. Yet I still felt drawn to it, and because it was written by a black man, I figured it might have reached for, and at the very least, accentuated some of the things I hadn’t found in Connor’s powerful work: the mirror I’m always searching for in black work. The mirror that asks that I bend in and remember where I broke at, and know why only a familiar voice can facilitate my wellness.

Initially I thought this would be very similar in structure to DAWTDB, and it is, but it’s not simply interested in monuments and statues. It’s also interested in buildings, land and the history held within the two, which makes for a robust exploration of spaces familiar to me because of my proximity to Louisiana growing up, or familiar to me because of the blackness I grew up in. Either way, the mirror was there and I was able to remember and begin construction on my understanding and the way I would teach our relationship with the land.

HTWIP takes the reader on a 295 page journey through 7 of the most influential spots of the black experience in the south: Monticello Plantation, the Whitney Plantation, Angola prison, Blandford Cemetery, Galveston Island–with pitstops in New York City—which is lowkey a whole burial ground—and Ghana. In those 295 pages Clint doesn’t hesitate to shatter myths to pieces—resulting in both the good and the bad aspects of history meeting in it’s prose with Clint’s piercing eye that provides both grace and venom for the ways in which the communities involved in the stealing, cultivation, and maintenance of the land have bought into and challenged.

As a Black American in the south, I thought about what it was saying about my relationship to the land, the history, and the buildings that cover both of their layers for better or most certainly worst, and I was so thankful for how much of this was discovery for Clint as well. Southern Blacks don’t generally have a celebrated relationship with the institutions and buildings that he visited and I found myself mirrored in the chapters about Monticello and Whitney because I was born and raised in Natchez, Ms. a town that does exactly what the towns surrounding anchors of the past he explored. I’ve had friends talk about getting shipped to Angola and I own vinyl of recordings of men surviving what he’s covered. This for me was indicative of the type of work we have to do to insert our ancestors into the very places that they literally powered on like a generator.

Trapped in these pages are amazing excerpts from some of the most prolific commentators on the institution of slavery, reconstruction, the prison industrial complex, and the civil war;When one travels over standouts Like W.e.b. DuBois he also must make note of those figures who speak through Clint out of the void on things like surviving the electric chair and white supremacy in all its forms. If this closeness to home isn’t enough Clint ends it all with dialogue between his Grandfather and Grandmother who show us that there are stories right under our noses that deserve remembrance as well.

This book showed me how everything in the south is connected through its connection to slavery. Even as I stood in New Orleans under the statue of this man I had no idea of his relationship not only to the founding of this city, but also the founding of a garrison in Bay St. Louis, Ms. He also “negotiated” with the Natchez indians to help build Fort Rosalie on The Mississippi River which ultimately became my hometown of Natchez, Ms.  He also wrote Le Code Noir, the “black code” of laws that outlined how slaves were to be treated in the colonies. All of this is what it takes to have a 26 foot replica of your likeness placed somewhere. I guess we should get to work, right?

This book gave me so much to consider in terms of what nonfiction can do, and it had me thinking about what a book by one of my friends Honoree Fanonne Jeffers is doing to me and will do to us all once it drops… but that’s another story… with more land, time, and buildings for us to look into… along with more blurbs by a certain scholar as well. We’ll get there. By and By.

With Love… Always + All Ways,

Akili Nzuri