Reckoning with Americaβs history of slavery
Keeps playing with the screen off. The episode is played from Fresh Airβs own podcast host.
Poet and writer Clint Smith says we are taught to think of slavery as something that happened a long, long time ago. But then he learned that his grandfather’s grandfather had been enslaved. βThis person who was so central to my life and my own identity is someone who was only a generation or two removed from a family member who had been born into slavery,” he tells Terry Gross. Smith is the author of the bestselling book How the Word Is Passed, about distortions in how the history of slavery was taught to him and other children — and the ways many Americans deceive themselves about that history. He’s also the author of the collection of poetry called Above Ground.
Also, critic at large John Powers reviews the new TV series Lanterns.Β
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