How the Word is Passed, by Clint Smith
They don’t host weddings at The Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana. The guides don’t discuss the architecture of the big house, dress in period costumes, or skip over the slave quarters.
The Whitney is the only plantation in the country in which the story of the enslaved people who lived and worked there is the central story.
In his book How the Word is Passed, poet Clint Smith chronicles his travels to various historic sites, such as the Whitney, to see how each reckons with its relationship to the legacy of slavery– Angola Prison, Monticello Plantation, Blandford Cemetery, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) commemoration celebration, and the slave house in Dakar, Senegal, are a few of the places on Smith’s itinerary. Smith deftly weaves history and personal stories into his conversations with tour guides, staff, curators, and other visitors.
(One such conversation: After the conclusion of a slavery focused tour at Monticello, a white woman tells Smith, “He’s [Jefferson] a great man, and he did all this….But we were just saying, this really took the shine off the guy.” )
As for the Whitney, how did this unusual plantation museum come about?
When John Cummings bought the dilapidated Whitney property in 1999, he envisioned a traditional tourist attraction, but after immersing himself in the plantation’s history, he proposed something other than the usual antebellum house tour. Along with his partner, Dr. Ibrahima Seck, a Senegalese historian and Director of Research at the Whitney, they envisioned a new visitor experience at the Whitney, one that resurrected and rewrote the plantation experience through the eyes of the enslaved.
(After owning, operating, and renovating (cost $10,000,000) the property for twenty years, Cummings donated the Whitney in 2019, making it a nonprofit.)
The first day the Whitney opened in 2014, only four people showed up. By the end of the first year, they had about 34,000 visitors. Their goal is to reach 200,000 annual visitors by 2023. (Monticello hosts between 450,000 and 500,000 visitors annually.)
There has been controversy, of course. People were skeptical of Cummings’ motives, a white man telling the black experience. Some visitors felt the exhibitions lack cohesion, but most thought it was enough to facilitate a long overdue discussion.
Smith’s accounts of his visits to other sites are equally informative and engaging. I would happily join Smith on his travels as he is an excellent traveling companion, observant, curious, and dogged. His roots as a poet are everywhere evident in the lyrical prose, refreshing for a work of nonfiction.
A thoughtful read that I highly recommend. A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021.
WHAT OTHER REVIEWERS SAY
Eve L. Ewing, author of 1919 and Ghosts in the Schoolyard: “ Clint Smith has given us a new lens for seeing the spaces we inhabit, the stories they tell, and the people who tell those stories. How the Word is Passed sheds light on the contested narratives beneath the surface of our collective national identity, inviting us to dig a little deeper, reminding us never to take received histories for granted.”
WHO WROTE IT
Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent. The book won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. The recipient of numerous fellowships, his writing has been published in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Poetry, and The Paris Review. He received his BA in English from Davidson College and his PhD from Harvard University.
FOOTNOTE: I couldn’t resist sharing this from the Angola chapter: Angola Prison, the largest maximum-security prison in the U.S., has a gift shop, stocked with Angola branded shot glasses, sunglasses, t-shirts, and a mug that says, “Angola, A Gated Community.” Really?!