On Feb. 17, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture will host a virtual discussion with Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, and Johns Hopkins historian Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson.
Smith and Johnson will explore the legacy of slavery and its imprint on American history.
In How the Word Is Passed, his first major work of nonfiction, Smith – poet, scholar, and staff writer at The Atlantic – recounts visits to sites in America and West Africa to examine how each reckons with its relationship to the history of American slavery.
Smith begins at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia, and ends with Gorée Island in Senegal, once the largest slave-trading center on the African coast.
Smith and Johnson, an assistant professor in the history department at Johns Hopkins and a fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies at Harvard University, will begin their discussion at 7:00 p.m.
The virtual event will be held in conjunction with the museum’s new exhibition, Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth., which profiles revolutionary men – such as Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, and Kendrick Lamar – who have altered the course of history.
The exhibition will run from Feb. 11 through Aug. 14.
The program is presented in partnership with The Hard Histories at Hopkins Project, launched in fall 2020 to examine the role that racism and discrimination have played at Johns Hopkins.
Those interested in attending can register here.
