How Americans deceive ourselves about slavery

Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed explores how slavery is — and isn't — taught. And Above Ground includes poems to his children about what their ancestors endured and escaped. He spoke with Fresh Air in 2021 and 2023. And Above Ground includes poems to his children about what their ancestors endured and escaped. He spoke with Fresh Air in 2021 and 2023. Transcript DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. After the statue of Robert E. Lee near downtown New Orleans was taken down from its 60-foot pedestal in 2017, Clint Smith became obsessed with how slavery is remembered and reckoned with and with teaching himself all the things he wishes someone had taught him long ago. Smith is from New Orleans, where at least a hundred streets, statues, parks and schools are named after Confederate figures, slaveholders and defenders of slavery. His nonfiction book, "How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With The History Of Slavery Across America," won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, reached No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list and was on the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2021. For the book, he visited eight places to better understand the distortions in the way the history of slavery was taught to him and to most children, as well as the ways many Americans deceive themselves about that history. D. in education from Harvard. He also is a poet and a staff writer at The Atlantic. His book "Counting Descent" won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. And in 2023, he published another collection of poems called "Above Ground." He's a previous National Poetry Slam champion. We're going to listen to Smith's 2021 interview with Terry Gross. But first, he reads a poem he wrote about growing up in New Orleans.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)CLINT SMITH: (Reading) Growing up, the iconography of the Confederacy was an ever-present fixture of my daily life. Every day on the way to school, I passed a statue of P. Beauregard riding on horseback, his Confederate uniform slung over his shoulder and his military cap pulled far down over his eyes. As a child, I did not know who P. I did not know he was the man who ordered the first attack that opened the Civil War. I did not know he was one of the architects who designed the Confederate national flag.