![Family on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina, circa 1862. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and learnnc.org. [1]](https://mikepaul.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/family-of-african-american-slaves-on-smiths-plantation-beaufort-south-carolina-e835a0.jpg)
Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed, takes on some recent thoughts about slavery’s legacy and whether or not museums are the last refuge of “woke.”
Trump’s Truth Social comment on slavery was unsettling for me not only because I am the descendant of enslaved people, and not only because I was born and raised in New Orleans, which was once the center of the domestic slave trade, but also because I am an American who believes that the only way to understand this country—the only way to love this country—is to tell the truth about it. Part of that truth is that chattel slavery, which lasted in the British American colonies and then the American nation for nearly 250 years, was indeed quite bad.
No matter how you decide to spin events, slavery was bad. Like, for real. Really bad. Always has been. Don’t forget that.
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