Share this page!

Clint Smith Profile picture
Twitter logo
16 Jun, 28 tweets, 10 min read
I’m so grateful for the way that HOW THE WORD IS PASSED has been received in the world. This book is only possible because of the historians whose scholarship has transformed my understanding of slavery in America. Here is a thread of some of their books. I hope you buy them 🧵:
"The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family" by @agordonreed

bookshop.org/books/the-hemi…
"Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory" by @davidwblight1

bookshop.org/books/race-and…
"The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation" by @DainaRameyBerry

bookshop.org/books/the-pric…
"In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863" by @ProfLMH

bookshop.org/books/in-the-s…
"Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market" by @abufelix12

bookshop.org/books/soul-by-…
"Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth" by @KevinLevin

bookshop.org/books/searchin…
"Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past" by @analuciaraujo_

bloomsbury.com/us/slavery-in-…
"Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America" by Ira Berlin

bookshop.org/books/many-tho…
"They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South" by @sejr_historian

bookshop.org/books/they-wer…
"Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South" by Kenneth M. Stampp

bookshop.org/books/peculiar…
"Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era" by James M. McPherson

bookshop.org/books/battle-c…
"The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery" by Eric Foner

bookshop.org/books/the-fier…
"Those Who Labor for My Happiness: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello" by Lucia C. Stanton

bookshop.org/books/those-wh…
"The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism" by @Ed_Baptist

bookshop.org/books/the-half…
"Capitalism and Slavery" by Eric Williams

bookshop.org/books/capitali…
"Empire of Cotton: A Global History" by Sven Beckert

bookshop.org/books/empire-o…
"The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition" by @ProfMSinha

bookshop.org/books/the-slav…
"Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865" by Patrick Rael

bookshop.org/books/eighty-e…
"New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan" by Jill Lepore

bookshop.org/books/new-york…
"Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge" by @ericaadunbar

bookshop.org/books/never-ca…
"Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World" by David Brion Davis

bookshop.org/books/inhuman-…
"Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life" by Barbara J. Fields andKaren E. Fields

bookshop.org/books/racecraf…
"The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics" by James Oakes

bookshop.org/books/the-radi…
"Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World" by Jessica Marie Johnson

bookshop.org/books/wicked-f…
"Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies" edited by John W. Blassingame

bookshop.org/books/slave-te…
Okay, so that's 25 books that have been really helpful for me in understanding how the history of slavery shaped our country. It is *by no means* an exhaustive list. The scholarship on slavery is deep and rich and remarkable and one could make a list that truly goes on forever.
Buy historians' books. Cite historians' work. Send historians emails and tweets to let them know how you've been impacted by their work. The only way we are able to make sense of the world around us is because they give us the tools to understand everything that has come before.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Clint Smith

Clint Smith Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @ClintSmithIII

Clint Smith Profile picture
1 Jun
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 🧵:

littlebrown.com/titles/clint-s…
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.
Read 15 tweets
Clint Smith Profile picture
21 May
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.

All event details & registration info can be found here: clintsmithiii.com/events Image
I’ll be in conversation with @eveewing on June 1st at 7pm ET. Cohosted by @PGCMLS and @Loyaltybooks: eventbrite.com/e/clint-smith-… Image
I’ll be in conversation with @MsPackyetti on June 3rd at 8pm ET. Cohosted by @cwclub and @marcusbooks: commonwealthclub.org/events/2021-06… Image
Read 6 tweets
Clint Smith Profile picture
21 May
“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.”

Obscuring history is the same as lying about it.

nytimes.com/2021/05/20/us/…
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/…
Read 4 tweets
Clint Smith Profile picture
10 May
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.

This excerpt from my new book is the cover story for @TheAtlantic. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
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.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Read 12 tweets
Clint Smith Profile picture
30 Apr
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.
Read 8 tweets
Clint Smith Profile picture
21 Apr
I wrote about how to many people George Floyd became a symbol, but before that he was a father. And in so many ways, the latter is far more important.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
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.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @ClintSmithIII has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @ClintSmithIII!

Read all threads by @ClintSmithIII

:(