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    How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith Summary

    How the Word Is Passed
    Clint Smith
    4.53 (15 Reviews)
    HistorySocietyPolitics
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    Overview of How the Word Is Passed

    Clint Smith's #1 NYT bestseller journeys through America's slavery sites, revealing hidden histories that shape our present. John Green praised its "piercingly alive" prose while it earned the National Book Critics Circle Award by confronting truths most Americans never learned.

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    “

    Lineage is a strand of smoke making its way into the sky even though we can't always tell where it's coming from.

    ”
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    What if the distance between slavery and today could be measured not in centuries, but in a single human lifetime? Ruth Odom Bonner, who stood beside the Obamas at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, was the daughter of a man born enslaved. This isn't ancient history buried in dusty archives-it's breathing, walking, living memory. The same Mississippi River that flows past New Orleans today once carried over one hundred thousand enslaved people after 1808, yet most tourist brochures remain silent. This silence isn't accidental. It's a choice we make about which stories to tell and which to bury. The question isn't whether this history exists, but whether we're brave enough to look it in the eye.

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    Carrying Forward What Cannot Be Forgotten