Earlier this year, host Ali Muldrow interviewed poet and journalist Clint Smith about his new book, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. Since then, How the Word is Passed was longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and named one of the 10 Best Books of 2021 by the New York Times.
Today, we revisit this important interview with Clint Smith about the history of slavery and its echoes in present-day America.
Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent (Write Bloody Publishing, 2017) and the nonfiction book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown and Company, 2021).
This interview originally aired on June 9, 2021.