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

“The whole city is a memorial to slavery.”

Smith quotes historian Walter Johnson on the extent to which slavery is embedded in the history of New Orleans. While Johnson’s point is particular to New Orleans, it sparks an idea that becomes integral to Smith’s discussion of other locations—that all US land is a site where the history of slavery can be acknowledged because slavery is the very foundation upon which the country stands.

“Both of the men inscribed words that promoted equality and freedom in the founding documents of the United States while owning other human beings. Both men built a nation while making possible the plunder of millions of people. What they gave our country, and all they stole from it, must be understood together.”

Here, Smith refers to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. He asserts that understanding these men and the foundation of the United States requires acknowledging the hypocrisy in their endorsement of freedom and equality at the same time they endorsed and benefited from the institution of slavery. The quote suggests that the reckoning with slavery necessarily involves constructing a more holistic and complex image of founding fathers and other historical figures than their deification and public images have made possible.

“What reverberated throughout was the humanity of the enslaved people– their unceasing desire to live a full life, one that would not be defined simply by their forced labor.”

Smith refers to Thorson’s intentional language around the humanity of enslaved people during one of the tours at Monticello. The quote is significant because it introduces the idea that enslaved people’s humanity was a driving factor in both slavery and its resistance. White supremacist power relied on the ability to control the human capacities of enslaved people while enslaved people’s sense of themselves as human, their own agency and autonomy, undergirded their resistance to white supremacist institutions and their impacts.