How the Word is Passed

Across the country are innumerable places that have direct ties to slavery—our schools, our streets, our prisons, our cemeteries, our cities—places that illustrate how some of this country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view. In this talk, #1 New York Times bestselling author Clint Smith discusses how the history of slavery has shaped the contemporary landscape of inequality, and shares what he learned from trips to different historical sites throughout the country that are tied to slavery’s legacy.

Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the stories of people living today, Clint’s talk outlines how these places reckon with—or fail to reckon with—their relationship to slavery, and how it is our responsibility to collectively document, learn from, and account for this history. Drawing on his award-winning book, How the Word Is Passed, he shows how the history we tell ourselves was a long time ago really wasn’t that long ago at all. Audiences will walk away understanding not only how our country became like this, but where we go from here. A book-signing will follow the lecture.

This lecture is part of the 2025-2026 Rosenberry Lecture Series. Purchase tickets to multiple lectures in the series here.

About the Speaker

Clint Smith is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling poetry collection Above Ground and the award-winning poetry collection Counting Descent. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Clint received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and a Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

A hearing loop assistive listening system is available for this program to assist guests with hearing loss. Please see our accessibility information for more details.