This past September, the Harrington School of Communication and Media hosted a virtual event with the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author, Clint Smith. Also among Smith’s impressive list of accomplishments include being a staff writer at The Atlantic, the 2014 National Poetry Slam champion, and winning the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association for his poetry collection, Counting Descent. This event focused on Smith’s New York Times #1 bestselling narrative nonfiction book, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America. Smith detailed the origin story behind the book, the journalistic process of researching and writing his book, and had the opportunity to engage with curious students by offering his insight for their questions.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Smith discussed the impact of being surrounded by the symbols and iconography of confederate soldiers during his upbringing. Seeing some of those monuments come down in May of 2017, Smith recalled, “I was thinking about what it meant that I grow up in a majority black city in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslaved people.” He continued, “They are reflective of the stories people tell and those stories shape the narratives that communities carry.” Subsequently, Smith said his book emerged to fill in these gaps of his own childhood, education, and understanding of the stories that are told through the symbolism of the many places that are haunted by the afterlife of slavery. Among the places he visited that are described in his book include Monticello plantation, Angola State Prison, a Confederate cemetery, and New York City. Smith’s aim was to gauge the story being told by these places relative to their proximity to enslavement. “Ultimately the thing I want people to recognize is not only our physical proximity to this history and how the scars of slavery are etched into the landscape all around us, but also our temporal process,” he said.

Smith enjoyed the opportunity to engage with students who had questions about his favorite Black writers growing up and storytelling within his own family. The Director of the Harrington School, Professor Ammina Kothari, also asked Smith on behalf of Harrington students to discuss the process of researching and writing his book. Smith reflected, “I did not think of myself as a journalist, but now looking back what I was doing was journalism.” Smith found it difficult as an introvert to approach various people at these cites to ask them about their thoughts and how they would put the trauma into context. However, Smith was deeply motivated to capture these stories. He recognized, “It put me in places that I otherwise wouldn’t go and I end up learning things that I otherwise wouldn’t have learned. So, what I love about being a journalist is it pulls me out of my comfort zone in ways that I wouldn’t anticipate.” Jeanette Riley, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, offered closing remarks to thank Smith for his thoughtful and engaging programming as well as for illustrating the authenticity of political journalism for our students.

~Written by Sabrinna Fogarty