My new book HOW THE WORD IS PASSED is out today. It explores how different places across the country reckon with, or fail to reckon with, their relationship to the history of slavery. I gave this book everything I have. Here are the places I visited 🧵:
I start in my hometown of New Orleans, thinking about what it meant that I grew up in majority Black city in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslaved people. I started the book after watching the Confederate statues come down in the city in May 2017
I traveled to Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, trying to explore how a place remembers a man who both wrote one of the most important documents in the history of the western world, and who also enslaved over 600 people during his life including four of his own children.
I traveled to the Whitney Plantation, the only plantation in Louisiana (and one of the only in the country) that is dedicated to telling the story of slavery from the perspective of the enslaved. A plantation surrounded by many plantations where people continue to hold weddings.
I traveled to Angola prison, the largest maximum security prison in the country and a place where incarcerated people continue to work for virtually no pay on land that was once a plantation. A prison that has a gift shop where where people can purchase coffee mugs like this...
I traveled to Blandford cemetery, one of the largest Confederate cemeteries in the country—where the remains of 30,000 Confederate soldiers are buried—and spent time with the Sons of Confederate Veterans. This is the entrance to the cemetery which reads “OUR CONFEDERATE HEROES”
I traveled to Galveston, TX for Juneteenth and spent time in this building, Ashton Villa, with the people who work to keep the memory of Juneteenth alive on the island where in 1865 Union General Granger issued General Order No. 3 which proclaimed in Texas “all slaves are free”
I traveled to New York City to explore how slavery was memorialized in what was once the second largest slave port in the US & whose mayor wanted to secede from the Union. And where I learned things like how the Statue of Liberty was intended to celebrate the abolition of slavery
I also traveled abroad to Dakar, Senegal in an effort to explore how slavery was taught and remembered in Western Africa. I visited the famous House of Slaves at Gorée Island to explore how a single door in a single home became one of the primary symbols of the slave trade.
And I traveled to the National Museum of African American History and Culture with my grandparents. Walking through a museum that documents so much of the violence and history they experienced first-hand. Interviewing them and getting insights into their lives I had never known.
This book wouldn’t be possible without the remarkable generosity of all of the public historians, tour guides, descendents, incarcerated individuals, museum curators, artists, activists, teachers, and students who told me their stories. So many people doing such incredible work.
I want to also thank the historians @agordonreed, @DainaRameyBerry, @ProfLMH, @KevinLevin, and @abufelix12 who a year ago read this manuscript and gave me feedback that was more helpful and generative than I have the words to express. I’m so grateful for their time and engagement
Thank you to my editor @vanessamobley, my agent @AliaHanna, and my wife without whom this book would not have been what it is. An entire community of friends and family made this possible
Hey there, so HOW THE WORD IS PASSED comes out June 1st and I’ll be going on a virtual book tour to celebrate its launch. I’m thrilled to be in conversation with some brilliant & thoughtful people.
“A flurry of proposed measures that could soon become law...try to reframe Texas history lessons and play down references to slavery and anti-Mexican discrimination that are part of the state’s founding.”
There is a state sanctioned effort to prevent students from understanding that the contemporary landscape of inequality didn’t just emerge out of nowhere, but is the direct result of a history that created it. nytimes.com/2021/05/20/us/…
These people are so desperate to uphold a white supremacist mythology about this country that they are literally introducing bills that would, in essence, compel teachers to straight up lie about how racism shaped our current society. nytimes.com/2021/05/20/us/…
Before the pandemic, I traveled to one of the largest Confederate cemeteries in the country & spent the day with the Sons of Confederate Veterans to understand how the Lost Cause lives on.
At the Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg, VA the remains of 30,000 Confederate soldiers are buried. Tombstones stretch across the nearly 200 acre land. Confederate battle flags dot the landscape to the extent that, from a distance, you might mistake them for small, red flowers.
When I was there, I listened as members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans told me a story about the Civil War and American history that was very different than the one I knew, different than the one that was grounded in reality.
Some news: I’m excited to be the host of a new @TheCrashCourse series, Black American History. We’ve got 50 episodes to cover 400 years. So we can’t cover everything, but we do cover a lot. We’ll drop a new episode every week. I hope you’ll watch. We’ve been working hard on this.
I’ve been a fan of Course Course for years. I’ve learned so much from the videos they’ve made ranging from the French Revolution to Chemistry to Shakespeare. So when I was approached with the opportunity to host a new course on Black history in America, I couldn’t turn it down.
When I went to grad school, I felt transformed by everything I was learning & I thought a lot about alternative ways to bring Black history to people who may not be able to sit for hours with academic texts. This is one attempt to bring this history to folks in a different way.
When I see that photo of George and Gianna, I think about my own daughter, and of so many other little Black girls who are just children being children. Full of energy, curiosity, and innocence.
After I heard the verdict I hugged my kids, and I thought of how George Floyd would never get to do so again. The world can make someone into a symbol, but it should never forget that they were a person. A person who loved and was loved. A person who did not choose to die.
I know I keep saying it, but now that we're a full year into this thing I'm just blown away by how millions of teachers across the country have completely shifted and reimagined both their pedagogy and their role as educators to continue serving their students. It's incredible.
Teaching in person, teaching virtually, teaching in person *and* virtually at the same time, teaching virtually while managing their own children learning virtually in the next room. It's the sort of balancing act no one should've ever had to do, but so many have done it so well.
Most teachers were already egregiously underpaid, but if there was ever any doubt that they should be paid more—which is to say paid at a level commensurate with the work they do—there should no doubt left. They deserve respect, they deserve more pay, they deserve our gratitude.