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

In these two chapters, Smith offers a direct contrast to the head-on confrontation of slavery. His experiences at Angola Prison and Blandford Cemetery are marked by awareness of the sites’ deliberate evasion of the topic of slavery. Angola’s evasion takes the shape of an emphasis on sensationalism, while Blandford’s approach is idyllic. Both share deliberate narrative recreation in order to advance white people’s particular sense of themselves and their ancestors as good, honorable people. The maintenance of white comfort implies a personal investment in the subjugation of Black people and the role that historical narrative plays in maintaining that investment and comfort.

The contrast between sensational and idyllic approaches provides clues about the ways that white supremacist narratives comfort white people and absolve them of their guilt in the present. On the one hand, Angola suggests that present iterations of violence against Black people are justified. When Smith questions in the gift shop who the gift shop serves and who would see the prison as a tourist destination, he alludes to the white comfort created and sustained by the continued oppression of Black people. For example, the “white mug with the silhouette of a guard sitting in a watchtower surrounded by fencing” (90) and the words “Angola” and “A Gated Community” invoke sentiments of white fear and ideas of what’s at stake if Blackness, associated with criminality, is not constantly surveilled and controlled. Reiterating the point of the prison’s tourism purpose, Smith writes, “[b]ut as I walked from room to room of the museum, it became clear that the institution was interested only in preserving a history that created clear, misguided demarcations between ‘criminals’ and those who watch over them” (91). 

On the other hand, the Blandford has chosen not to make a spectacle of Black suffering, but rather to act as if the suffering does not or has not existed. For example, when asked about Confederate sympathizers, Ken says, “You’re here primarily for the beauty of the windows […] an awful lot of people come from Michigan and Minnesota and Montana because they want to see the beauty of the windows” (122-123). He goes on to say, “In most cases we try and fall back on the beauty of the windows, the Tiffany glass kind of thing” (123). While the emphasis on the windows is important as an example of the idyllic approach, it also serves the purpose of suggesting the link between slavery and those who are invested in the capitalist economy. This intimate connection, more specifically that slavery is the foundation of capitalism and the wealth of the US, is something that Smith notes throughout the book. 

Further examples of Angola’s sensationalism include the fact that the tour involves visits to where the most brutal acts of violence against Black people have taken place, such as the execution chamber, the Red Hat cell block, and death row. Further examples of Blandford’s idyllic approach include the keynote speech and conversations at the SCV event:

Gramling’s speech sounded so much like similar Memorial Day celebrations after the end of Reconstruction, when orators exclaimed that this day should be one of reconciliation, paying tribute to the sacrifices made by both Confederate and Union solders without accounting for what the war had actually been fought over. (138)

Jeff insists that the war was not about slavery, but rather about states’ rights (148), and invokes the Black Confederate soldier myth to absolve the Confederacy of racism. Jason claims that the war couldn’t have been over slavery because the average Confederate soldier was not a slave owner (168). 

While differing in approach, both sites manage to ensure white comfort. However, Smith’s recollection reveals a very different and uncomfortable experience for him and suggests that false historical narratives for the comfort of white people have a negative impact on Black people. In the Angola gift shop, he is stunned still by the photo of the Black prisoners above the cash register (90). He describes how he felt his “chest tighten and [his] mouth turn sour” (95) as he approached the execution room. On being in the actual room, he writes: “A hot rush of blood pulsed behind my ears, as I felt the shame of being alive in a room built to kill” (97). As they tour death row, he feels out of his body, has a tight chest, and has trouble recalling the experience when he’s trying to write about it:

“[A]s someone who is a Black American, someone whose ancestors were enslaved, it is very difficult for me to disentangle any of it. I think there’s a profound dissonance, even to be here” (125). 

Furthermore, at the SCV’s Memorial Day event, Smith notes his discomfort as he draws the attention of those he knows are Confederate sympathizers. While Smith’s reaction to Angola was more physical than his reaction to Blandford, his elaboration on the physical, psychological, and emotional toll suggests that any historical narrative in service to the maintenance of white comfort is continued violence against Black people. 

He demonstrates the narratives that each site has chosen to adopt, pointing out the ways that they are in service to white supremacy. Angola communicates a narrative of progress in its museum brochure: “Once known as the ‘bloodiest prison in America,’ the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola has emerged as one of the most progressive and well managed prisons in the country” (93). It emphasizes the expansion of education and moral rehabilitation programs and the reduction of violence (93). Roger’s introduction includes “quickly pivot[ing] to discuss the positive things the prison was now doing to make life better for the people held captive there” (94). When Smith asks Roger direct questions about the prison’s relationship to slavery, Roger again reiterates the idea of progress when he says, “[b]ut when you go from that, and you go years and years and years, and you get to where we are today with redemption and the change– then that’s what I like to talk about” (100). Smith suggests that the narrative serves white people’s absolution by noting Roger’s framing of prison reform as a manifestation of white benevolence rather than the efforts of Black people experiencing the prison’s conditions (111). The need for absolution also seems clear in Roger’s phrase “I can’t change that” (101) as he deflects from the subject of slavery to emphasize progress. 

The Blandford narrative and the sentiments of its visitors are rooted in the Lost Cause narrative. As Smith corrects Gramling’s factual inaccuracy on Memorial Day, he argues that the Charleston, South Carolina history of Memorial Day is “largely forgotten in favor of interpretations more aligned with the Lost Cause” (140). The contrast between the two stories demonstrates how Gramling’s version of history serves white supremacy. For example, the Charleston history indicates that Black workmen, formerly enslaved, retrieved and buried the bodies of 260 Union soldiers who had been jailed at the prison at Charleston’s Washing Race Course and Jockey Club (139). The story that Gramling tells is of the UDC decorating the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers in Columbus, Mississippi. When Gramling confesses, “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I like it” (138), he implies a commitment to emotional reprieve rather than accuracy of fact, which is precisely the purpose that the Lost Cause narrative serves. 

Smith explains the emergence of the Lost Cause narrative in the late 19th century to “recast the Confederacy as something predicated on family, honor, and heritage” (140). Blandford staff and visitors echo the idea of the Lost Cause in their sentiments about the Confederacy. Ken attributes Confederacy “empathy” among visitors to “Southern roots, which go back into the 1860s and before” (123). On the subject of slavery regarding the Civil War, Martha says: “But I think from the perspective of my ancestors, it was not slavery. My ancestors were not slaveholders. But my great-great-grandfather fought” (124-125). Jeff reveals to Smith that he had several ancestors who fought on the Confederate side (147) and that “each individual that fought in these battles, under the circumstances, were trying to do it for freedom” (147-148). The man who William interviews tells him to make sure that Smith writes correctly about his ancestors, emphasizing that he’s “concerned about the truth, not mythology” (170). 

Smith identifies the centrality of their personal investment in the maintenance of white comfort at the expense of Black wellness and truth:

For many of the people I met at Blandford, the story of the Confederacy is the story of their home, of their family– and the story of their family is the story of them. So when they are asked to reckon with the fact that their ancestors fought a war to keep my ancestors enslaved, there is resistance to facts that have been documented by primary sources and contemporaneous evidence. They are forced to confront the lies they have upheld. They are forced to confront the flaws of their ancestors. (172)

The narratives espoused at both sites do little to force that confrontation. Instead, they rely on the recreation and reinforcement of ideas that protect white people’s sense of themselves and their lineage. With the two chapters on Angola and Blandford, and their demonstration of the evasion of slavery, Smith demonstrates, as he does in the first three chapters, that personal investment is integral to one’s approach to slavery; personal investment is informed by one’s sense of self, connected to one’s lineage; and one’s sense of self and understanding of one’s lineage is shaped by historical narrative. However, the two chapters also seem to add the point that the relationship among personal investment, understanding of one’s ancestry, and historical narrative are a webbed structure, in that each dimension feeds into and reciprocates both the others.