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

As Smith travels through Virginia, he notes the difference between the northern suburbs and the more rural area where Confederate loyalties are evident. Passing by James Madison’s plantation, Montpelier, on his way to Thomas Jefferson’s, Monticello, he expresses that “[w]hat they gave our country, and all they stole from it, must be understood together” (9).

He arrives at Monticello, where he has chosen a tour focused on Jefferson’s relationship to slavery. The tour guide, David Thorson, begins with a succinct definition of chattel slavery and discussion of Jefferson’s extensive slave records, noting that Jefferson not only maintained his lifestyle through slave labor, but also that he gifted enslaved people to his children, grandchildren, and other family members. Smith notes Thorson’s intentional use of the word “human” rather than “slave.” He finds that an emphasis on enslaved people’s humanity, “their unceasing desire to live a full life” (13) reverberates throughout Thorson’s tour. 

Having learned of the four families enslaved at Monticello for three or more generations, Smith imagines what it would have looked like for these families to be human on the plantation. Then he reflects on the practice of family separation that was prevalent in slavery. While Jefferson himself was acutely aware of the impact of family separation and tried to avoid it, or bought and sold to reunite families, his sense of morality came second to his economic interests. He sold individuals when he needed money, and he separated families across his properties and by gifting enslaved people to his family members. Furthermore, even though he believed himself to be a benevolent slave owner, he engaged in public and brutal assaults on enslaved people as a means of asserting his authority and maintaining control of his property. 

While on the tour, Smith notices two women, Donna and Grace, who he approaches for an interview. They both share that they were not aware of Jefferson’s relationship to slavery prior to the tour, and they visited out of interest in the home and the architecture. Donna and Grace seem disappointed by the new information revealing Jefferson’s “big flaw.” Smith writes about Jefferson’s own awareness of his flaw. He illustrates that Jefferson knew slavery was degrading to those who perpetuated it while he believed in Black people’s inherent inferiority. His awareness of the degradation of slavery, as well as his eventual resignation to abolition, was something that he could only express privately as his public admonishment would upset his constituents. He absolved himself of a responsibility to abolition, believing that it was a matter for a future generation, as he and his counterparts had played their role by creating the constitutional republic. 

Smith returns to the conversation with Donna and Grace, who share what they had not learned in school about slavery or the humanity of enslaved people. Smith recognizes that he, too, had not learned about Jefferson’s relationship to slavery until much later in his life. He shares how the discovery of Jefferson’s thoughts on Phillis Wheatley personally affected him, making him feel as if Jefferson was disparaging an entire lineage of Black poets and was too blinded by his prejudices to know what love is. 

Smith then turns to a discussion of Sally Hemings, a mixed-race enslaved woman at Monticello who mothered some of Jefferson’s children. The exhibit on Hemings is the reason Smith decided to visit Monticello. The exhibit begins with a video, depicting Hemings and her children as shadows, to emphasize how little is known about them and their appearance. Smith discusses how sexual relationships between enslaved women and white slave owners were common in 18th century Virginia, noting the power dynamics and coercion that were involved. 

He speaks with a woman on the exhibit staff, Theresa, as they walk toward Mulberry Row. Theresa shares her belief that the exhibits at Monticello encourage visitors to see Jefferson’s complexity. While some visitors are open, others are shocked by or resistant to the new information. Monticello staff are trained to deal with visitor reactions. Theresa’s own journey has been one of learning and unlearning, since she, too, learned only of Jefferson’s heroic persona in school. When they arrive at Mulberry Row, Smith goes inside the slave cabin, noting its smallness as well as the reactions of other tourists around him. 

Smith returns to Monticello two months later for another of Thorson’s tours. Prior to meeting with Thorson, Smith meets with two managing staff at Monticello, Brandon Dillard and Linnea Grim. Dillard and Grim share that Monticello has been responsible for leading the change in the public discourse around Jefferson and slavery. Smith puts the changing discourse in context. The 1993 launch of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation’s (TJMF) oral history project, Getting Word, Annette Gordon-Reed’s 1997 publication of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy; and 1998 DNA tests confirming that Jefferson fathered Heming’s children encouraged the TJMF to launch their own investigation. Although met with opposition, they took the official position that Jefferson was the father of Hemings’ children, and thus began efforts to correct its stance on Hemings and Jefferson’s relationship to slavery. 

Smith meets up with Thorson for the Hemings tour, and then interviews him after. Thorson discusses how his role as a tour guide requires a balance between telling hard truths and not being so pushy that it shuts visitors down. He talks about the difference between history and nostalgia, demonstrating an awareness that challenging conceptions of Jefferson is challenging white people’s conception of themselves, so sensitivity is required. For Thorson, the idea of America is worth fighting for, which Smith attributes to his military background. 

Smith then meets with Niya Bates, Monticello’s Director of African American History and the Getting Word project. Bates explains how she and her team tracked the descendants of Monticello’s formerly enslaved people. She also explains her personal relationship to Monticello, having grown up in Virginia, as well as how she recognized that she’d become a public historian after a trip to Cloverfields Plantation when she was in college. She sees her work as a political commitment. Like Thorson, she discusses the need for sensitivity and proper training to deal with the reactions of visitors, but she has little patience for those who make claims that the truth is meant to tarnish Jefferson’s legacy. 

Smith ends his visit at Jefferson’s grave. He notices its majestic and ornate quality, especially in contrast to the grave site of enslaved people further down the hill. He reiterates that Jefferson’s lifestyle and comforts were made possible by slave labor and that whatever his moral stance or justifications for slavery, “he largely succumbed to that which he knew was indefensible” (50). The lives of those he enslaved are worthy of remembrance and commemoration.

Smith arrives at the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana to its severed head exhibit. The exhibit references an 1811 slave rebellion led by Charles Deslondes. Smith is scheduled to meet with John Cummings, the owner of the Whitney from 1999 to 2019. Smith details the history of the plantation’s ownership, sharing that it became “one of the most successful sugarcane enterprises in all of Louisiana” (57) by 1844. The Whitney in its current form stands apart as a plantation that centers the experience of enslaved people in its historical narrative.

Prior to meeting with Cummings, Smith meets Yvonne Holden, the Director of Operations. During the personal tour, they visit several of the site’s exhibits as Holden shares her experience of the work. She explains the centrality of the 1930s Federal Writers’ Project to the work at the Whitney, noting that it’s the voices and ordinary, everyday experiences of the enslaved that form the bulk of the Whitney’s narrative. The emphasis on the ordinary challenges the emphasis on the exceptional in dominant historical narratives taught in schools. This prompts Smith to feel a pang of guilt about the way that he used to question why every enslaved person couldn’t be exceptional and escape, and he thinks about the importance of not over-mythologizing our ancestors. 

At the Wall of Honor Memorial, Holden emphasizes the need to understand the experiences of enslaved women subject to sexual violence. This prompts Smith to reflect on the role of enslaved people’s human capacities, particularly that their recognition and use are essential to the maintenance of white supremacy. He suggests that white supremacy, then, is not about denying Black people’s humanity, but rather about having power over it. Holden shares her experience of distinct reactions from white and Black visitors, the former believing in the myth of “good” slave owners, while the latter heavily focus on violence and brutality. For Holden, it is imperative that enslaved people are viewed through a lens of agency, resistance, resilience, determination, and legacy.

After visiting the slave quarters, Smith meets with Cummings, the Whitney’s owner, who purchased the property with the original intention of making it a tourist site like other plantations across the South. In his research of the property, he came across documentation of sexual violence against enslaved women that prompted him to make the Whitney’s emphasis on the experience of enslaved people. He sees the Whitney as a dynamic public history alternative to academic writing on slavery.

Smith also meets with Cummings’s partner at the Whitney, Dr. Ibrahim Seck. The Senegalese historian became interested in studying the trans-Atlantic slave trade when he noted the connection between African music and the Delta blues. Like Cummings, he emphasizes the importance of public history as an alternative to academic writing, and like Holden, he is interested in going beyond the brutality of slavery. He believes that excavating and recognizing the cultural connections between Africans and African Americans is integral to understanding the foundations of the United States. 

Smith visits the Field of Angels, a memorial honoring over 2,000 children who died between 1823 and 1893, with Holden. He then returns to one of the slave cabins and takes in the view. As he looks at the names on another commemorative monument, he thinks about lineage and how he might even know some of the descendants of the enslaved people who are listed on the monument. Again, he thinks about all that he had not learned about slavery growing up in Louisiana. In his conclusion, he characterizes the Whitney as a site experimenting with rewriting a historical narrative and catalyzing discussion around the truth of slavery.