How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Smith arrives at the National Museum of the American Indian to begin a walking tour of the Underground Railroad in New York City. The tour guide, Damaras Obi, begins with her Nigerian and Dominican background, emphasizing that the history of slavery and the contents of the tour are world history, not merely Black, New York, or US history. After warning her audience that some of this new information may make them uncomfortable, she launches into a discussion of the difference between the racially based chattel slavery that characterized the Americas and the slavery that preceded it. She recounts the history of the Dutch and Lenape encounter on the land, noting that slave labor cleared the land, built homes, and laid the infrastructural groundwork for Dutch settlement. 

Obi then turns their attention to the statues in front of the museum building that represent Africa, Europe, America, and Asia. She points out the characteristics and contrasts of the statues, noting how the symbolism reinforces white supremacist ideology. Smith reflects on how often he’d walked past the statues without considering “how the priorities of genocide, colonization, slavery, and exploitation had been literally carved into these stones and proudly displayed” (214). Smith writes about the high rates of Black mortality in New York during the 17th and 18th centuries, especially after the British took over the land from the Dutch. He also notes the subtle and outright resistance of the enslaved population, including a 1741 arson conspiracy that prompted more shipment of Africans directly from Africa rather than the Caribbean as British demand for slave labor continued to grow.

As the tour group walks through the financial district, Smith learns that Wall Street and Water Street was originally the site of a slave market. He looks around at the banks near the former slave market and reflects on how deeply embedded the financial industry is in the institution of slavery. For example, some the nation’s largest banks have predecessors who not only listed enslaved people as collateral, but also handled the wealth of slave owners and financed every facet of slavery. Smith’s reflection on such entanglement supports Obi’s assertions as she pushes back against the idea that the white people of New York specifically and the North generally were the “good guys” in terms of slavery. 

Although there were white people like Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan who used their wealth to fund the abolitionist movement, Smith finds that dominant narratives over-emphasize the role of white people in abolition efforts while diminishing or completely ignoring that Black resistance was the major force behind the abolition movement. He recounts the story of Thomas Downing, a free Black man who used his restaurant as a cover for hiding people making their escape journey. He also posits that, unlike many white abolitionists whose calls for the end of slavery didn’t necessarily entail racial equality, Black abolitionists understood that antislavery and antiracism were both necessary and deeply intertwined with one another. 

As they walk towards the African Burial Ground, Smith speaks with another tourist, Pierre, who is visiting from Hamburg, Germany. Pierre expresses that German education does not teach much about American slavery. He is surprised by the prevalence and extent of racial inequality in the US today, noting that although Black Americans have told him about it, other Americans have acted as if everything is great. Smith and Pierre both agree that the continuation of racial inequality results from lack of acknowledgement that there is a problem and an unwillingness to talk about it. 

Smith provides a history of the African Burial Ground, which contains the remains of 419 free and enslaved Black people buried during the 17th and 18th centuries. Having fallen out of public memory by the end of the 18th century, its restoration and designation as a National Historic Landmark and National Monument was prompted by the federal government’s attempt to build an office tower over the site in 1990. During the government’s archaeological research, they found human remains, nearly half of them from children that were sent to the W. Montague Cobb Research Laboratory at Howard University for examination after pressure from the Black community. In 2003, the research lab returned and reburied the remains in a grand ceremony. Smith sees the African Burial Ground discovery, research, and commemoration as central to New York having to account for its slaveholding past. 

After the tour ends, Smith visits Central Park on advice from Obi. Obi had shared with Smith that Central Park was built on top of Seneca Valley, a neighborhood established by free Black people in the 19th century. As the value of the land increased and white, wealthy New Yorkers demanded a park, the state of New York enforced eminent domain and forcible removal of the Black families to seize the property. Smith thinks about how the present enjoyment of Central Park depended on the violent disruption of Black families. As New York’s “untold history [is] unraveling all around” (234), Smith realizes how deeply embedded the state, its history, and its economic success are built upon slavery. 

Smith then visits Liberty Island to see the new exhibit that reinterprets the Statue of Liberty’s origins. Although the Statue of Liberty is commonly interpreted as a symbol of welcome and promise for immigrants, its original conception by Eduard Rene de Laboulaye was rooted in the celebration of abolition, and its original design by Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi included Lady Liberty holding broken shackles in her left hand. Smith’s conversation with one of the park rangers and historical evidence from Alan Kraut suggest that those who funded the statue’s construction opposed the centrality of abolition to the statue’s symbolism, and instead opted for a story that emphasizes the strong friendship between the US and France. The broken shackles are hidden partially beneath Lady Liberty’s robe. As Smith concludes the chapter, he reflects on how the statue’s design and symbolism would have been different if the broken shackles had remained in Lady Liberty’s left hand.

Smith is in Dakar, Senegal speaking with Momar Niang, a Senegalese polyglot journalist acting as Smith’s translator. On the trip to Gorée Island, Niang reveals that he’s never visited Gorée, expressing the shame he feels and his attempt to forget the tragedy embedded in the island’s history. However, he also feels that Senegal needs to be more direct about the confrontation with slavery and how historical realities have shaped present circumstances. Gorée Island, designated a World Heritage Site in 1978, was colonized by the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French, with the French gaining and maintaining control in 1677 until Senegal’s independence in 1960. It served as a site of the slave trade from the 16th century until France abolished slavery in 1848. 

When Smith and Niang arrive at Gorée, they begin the tour with their guide, Sam, after paying a tax. Smith emphasizes to Sam that he is most interested in seeing the House of Slaves. After Senegal gained independence, the country’s president, Leopold Sedar Senghor, tasked Joseph Ndiaye with researching the house and its role in the slave trade. Ndiaye is responsible for the historical narrative around the House of Slaves, as well as the concept of the “Door of No Return.” Smith stands at the edge of door before stepping inside of the chamber where enslaved people were kept. He notes its smallness and darkness. He then steps inside the Cellule des Recalcitrants, where resistant enslaved people were kept and notes that his eyes never adjust to the darkness and that his bones crack from the cramped conditions. 

Smith and Niang then meet with Eloi Coly, the curator and site manager of the House of Slaves. Coly became assistant curator in the mid-1980s, and he became head curator after Ndiaye’s death. He explains that the site was originally a trading post for European colonial powers to discover Africa’s resources, but it became a slave trading site after the inception of slavery in the Americas. He describes the cycle orchestrated by European powers to keep a steady supply of enslaved people through alliances with local African leaders. However, he makes clear that African allyship with European powers was not a widespread practice and that many African societies formed alliances with one another and resisted. Coly expresses that he sees himself as not only helping the nation reckon with its role in the slave trade, but also in helping to raise the collective self-esteem by presenting a history that begins before slavery and colonization. 

Smith turns to a discussion of the “Door of No Return” narrative. Although UNESCO and the rest of the world have adopted the narrative that millions of enslaved people passed through the door, newer research indicates that the number is closer to 33,000. It also indicates that it is unlikely that anyone passed through the door at all because it would not have been an entrance to the slave ships. When Smith asks Coly about the discrepancy, Coly insists that it is not about factual accuracy but about what the house and door represent. They are symbols of a broader phenomenon of remembering and reckoning. Although Smith wonders if the historical inaccuracies undermine the symbolism, he is mindful of the role that Coly plays as an inheritor of Ndiaye’s legacy and the ways that certain historical narratives serve a people’s sense of identity and national consciousness. Smith and Coly conclude their conversation with a discussion of American plantation sites. Coly’s previous tours of US historical sites helped him to understand the cultural connection between West Africans and Black Americans, but he was also struck by many of the sites’ de-emphasis on the experiences of enslaved people.

As Smith and Niang travel along Rue de Boufflers, they discuss current debates in Senegal about renaming streets that are named for colonial figures. Smith thinks about the parallel to debates in the US over the remnants of slavery. On their trip back to Gorée, Niang discusses his experience of the previous visit and how he could feel pain in himself when he imagined himself in the enslaved people’s positions. Smith notes the deliberate and cautious way that Niang speaks, “as if to avoid psychological and sensory overload” (258). 

They then visit the Maison d’Education Mariama Ba, an all-female boarding school established in 1977 by Senghor and named for a Senegalese author and feminist. They meet the school’s history teacher, Hasan Kane. Kane expresses that he attempts to help students understand the consequences of slavery without paralyzing them, and this attempt involves teaching that African history does not begin with slavery. He emphasizes that colonialism and slavery must be understood as intertwined phenomena, as linked systems of plunder. While he believes that economic reparations could be possible, he is more concerned with moral compensation, apology, and reckoning. For Kane, a holistic understanding of the impact of slavery and colonialism allows children to navigate the world differently. 

Smith then speaks with some of Kane’s teenage students. The girls speak about the brutality of slavery, including the Middle Passage and the treatment of women, as well as the perpetuation of myths and justifications for colonization and exploitation of Africa and its people in the philosophical and literary texts of European writers. When the whole class expresses its disdain for Hegel, Smith notes that “Hegel’s racism is part of much longer, insidious strain” (265) of Enlightenment rationalization of slavery, a philosophy that slave advocates in the US adopted as well. The girls demonstrate an awareness of the impact of colonization on Africans’ self-esteem and how slavery and colonization have shaped contemporary society. 

When Smith is back in the US, he looks at pictures from his trip to Senegal. Coming across a picture of the “Door of No Return,” he writes: “The door could no longer be what I had first imagined, but perhaps it did not to be” (267-268). He is coming around to the idea that historical accuracy may matter less than the symbolism that prompts one to reflect on what slavery meant. He describes how each site that he visited attempts to fill the gaps of history regarding slavery, concluding with the gaps that he as “a Black man in America” (269) is trying to fill about his lineage and who his ancestors were.