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

Smith stands on a riverfront in New Orleans overlooking the Mississippi. After noting the sights and sounds, he shares that the Mississippi River transported a million enslaved people from the upper South to the lower South after the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed in 1908, and 100,000 of those people were brought to New Orleans (3). 

Leon A. Waters approaches Smith and joins him on the riverfront. They are standing in front of a plaque put up by the New Orleans Committee to Erect Markers on the Slave Trade. Smith explains that markers such as the one they stand in front of have gone up around the city, as part of a larger effort to get people to fully reckon with the history of slavery in the United States. They have been successful in the removal of statues and monuments to white supremacist figures and the changing of street names, parks, and schools named for Confederate figures, slaveholders, and slavery advocates. Waters takes Smith around the city to show him these places. For Smith, they illuminate that the “echo of enslavement” (6) is throughout the city. 

Smith, who was born and raised in New Orleans, became interested in how slavery is remembered and reckoned with following the 2017 removal of Robert E.