were taken from the national gallery in athens, in 2012. the paintings were found in the dry river bed north of the greek capital. a 49 year old man has been arrested after confessing and taking police to the hiding, spoke. more on that story and everything else we've been covering on our website there. you can see our top story that developments in t gray in north nephew a and now the top stories on al jazeera, regional forces in t gray are threatening to pursue enemy fighter is across the retreat and border after retaking the regional capital on monday, that were being set celebrations in mcclay and across the region as local forces claimed victory in the nearly 8 months from conflict with federal troops. ethiopia government announced the unilateral cease fire with immediate effect,

but it's not yet clear. it's actually being observed. malcolm web has the latest from the roby, but it's important to understand that that sci fi that was declared by i b, m. s. government was unilaterally declared, it wasn't agreed with anybody, because the phones are off. we don't know if the government's upholding a ceasefire. and everything that the t p i left of said since didn't acknowledge that virus, all those comments that you mentioned just a few minutes ago about tasting their enemies even across the borders. make it sound like from, from that point of view, this conflict isn't over yet. that's all is really forces of those the palestinian business, unoccupied, east jerusalem triggering clashes with protesters. a butcher's shop in the city. one neighbourhood was one of a properties to be torn down. and israeli court has ruled that they will built without a proper permit. that land will be given to israeli settlers. former south african president, jacob zuba has 5 days to appear before police after

a court sentenced him to 15 months in prison. it's after he failed to appear at an inquiry into corruption. the constitutional court said his attempts to gain sympathy through public statements fly in the face of reason. the graft allegations include claims that he lead businessmen influence policy and russia has recorded the highest daily number of new current of respects since the outbreak began. 652 deaths were reported in the past, a passing record that was set last december. russia is grappling with a spike in infections spurred by the delta vary and which was 1st identified in india. health experts have accused the government of under reporting cove in 1000 death in the country. those are the top stores i'm gonna have one use for you in half an hour. stay with us coming up. next is the screen. thanks for watching. bye bye. me.

ah ah ah hi anthony eric. hey, you're watching the stream in today's episode, we are going to be joined by kevin smith. he is a writer, a poet, and the author of this new book. how the word is passed, a reckoning with a history of slavery across america. clean it is so good to see you. welcome to the stream. it was a journey through black history. i wanted to go visit every single chapter in real life when you sat down to write this book. what was your mission? yes, so thank you so much for having me. the origin of the book

a originated in my home town and world, and i was watching several confederate statutes, monuments come down. and pg beauregard, the confederate, general jefferson davis, confederate, president, bobby lease confederate general, and thinking about what it meant that i grew up in a majority blast city, in which there were more mazda 2 in labor than there were 20 people. and what does that mean? what does it mean to get to school? i had to go to a property we boulevard to get to the grocery store. i had to go down jefferson davis parkway, to get to my middle school was name dr. elite a better se that my the street my parents live on is named after somebody who owned a 115 slay people. and one of the implications of that because we know bit symbols and i can maggie and names are not just symbols. they are reflective of the story that people and the stories people tell, shape the narrative, communities kerry and those narrative see the policy and public policy shapes material conditions of people's lives. which isn't to say that taking down that you wouldn't labor is going to erase the racial wealth gap in contemporary united states. but it is to say that all these things are part of the same system of

stories that help us make sense of what has happened to community. and that's what must be done for community in order to move forward. and so i was thinking about that in my home town in orland and i wanted to sort of brian it out and explore how different places across the country and even across the ocean wracking with deal directly with their own relationship. and if you how story hotel, i don't want to call it black history. i'm going to call it american history. you tell american history with such ease and comfort and an ability to draw people in whether they are white or they're not white. you help share those stories. that is all history is sharing stories. so why in the united states? if it's so difficult to share the stories of every body, not just the stories of the ancestors of white europeans. i think because he calls into question so much of the narrative that his shapes a contemporary american america is predicated on the missed the narrative proceed.

it is predicated on the idea that the reason one community was one way in another community looks another way is because of people in those communities and what they have or haven't done not is not because of what has been done to certain generation after generation after generation and so if we take an honest account of what has happened to people and, and different groups of people over the course of american history. and we account for the harm that has been done and how recent that harm is, right. what i write about in this book are not only our physical proximity to this period of time, but our 10 portal. i think all the time about how they are 250 years in this country. there's only not existing $150.00. so you have this institution that existed for a 100 years longer than as you have the woman who opened the national museum of african american history and culture, which is the big smithsonian museum documenting african american life that opened here in the united states in 2016, the woman who opened that museum alongside the obama family in 2016 was the daughter of an in slave purse. not the granddaughter or the great granddaughter.

she's the daughter in 2016 of someone born into intergenerational chattels. my grandfather's grandfather was in place. i think about my 4 year old son thing on my grandfather's lap, and i imagined him sitting on his grandfather's back. and i'm reminded again that the system we tell ourselves was a long time ago, wasn't that long ago at all? and when you realize our proximity to this period of history, then it makes clear that temporary social, economic, and political infrastructure is fundamentally tied to that. and that calls into question so many of the ideas that people have around you know, whether, why certain communities do or don't have to paint. you know, what i'm going to do, i'm going to ask you, chief audience who are watching right now. if you have a question or comment about american history that you want to ask claims about. and he comes through the lens of remembering that so many of black americans have a history of chattel slavery. then you can be in our youtube comment section right

away. and i'll try and bring those conversations those comments into our show. but i have a question. this is a question from hope she's on video, have a listen and then respond that. i wanted to ask mr. smith, what did you find most difficult? in writing and researching of this book, what did you find most rewarding and inspiring in the writing and reading and researching of this book. thank you so much for the question. i the most difficult thing was my trip to angola. i've worked in prisons and taught in prisons and jails for the past 7 years. the teacher and i thought i was, i was familiar with the landscape of incarceration in the country. and so i went to and goal at the context in goal present its largest, maximum security prison in the country. it's 800000 acres. why bigger than the island of manhattan to its place where 75 percent of the people held their black

men 70 percent are serving life sentences and it is built on top of a former slave plantation. and what i tell folks is that if you were to go to germany and you have the largest maximum security prison insurance, and it was built on top of form, a concentration case was the people held. there were fortunately jewels that place would rightfully be a global emblem of anti semitic. it will be hor, we'll be discussing. we will never allow a place like that to exist in that sort of content. and yet, here in the united states, we have the largest maximum security prison in the country with a vast majority of people on black mentoring licenses who work in the field of what was once a plantation. ma, someone watches, i'm on horseback with a gun over there where they work for virtually no pe. and so what does it mean that, that placing this in that context in that moment, what does it mean? how does whites from not only an act, physical violence against people's bodies, but also numbers collectively to certain types of violence is, what does it mean to definitely say the gift shop right there. the, there's the gift shop at the largest maximum security prison in the country where they sell shot glasses and coffee mugs and stuffed animals and the sweatshirt and

baseball cap. there was a prison mode where there was a coffee mug that had a silhouette of a washed house on it. and it said in gold community, i'm looking at your twitter feed right now. you look at that, you like, what the, what's right. it is, it's not only that this place is not interested in any sort of interrogation of its relationship which is bad, but that it is making a mockery and seemingly belittling the reality of the condition that thousands of people in that prison continue to live and it was there's a long way of saying that that was the most unsettling and haunting piece of what i experience. i want to talk about monte ciello, which is the 1st chapter of your book when he cello is the home as thomas jefferson . and he wrote part, he was responsible for the declaration of independence, he's really ro, now historical figure, even for americans,

he may not know the history in too much detail. let me just tell you a little clip from the website because this is often how thomas jefferson is remembered. having this and have a look the, we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. the claim that is historic, it is an epic, missing out big details from what a lot of americans learn about their own history. so you went to monte cello and what did you find out? want to show the top of my list of places that i wanted to go. because i think that jefferson embodied so many of the contradictions in the policy and the complexity of the american project in the sense that america, the places provided unparalleled and manageable opportunities for upward mobility.

and welcome simulation for millions and millions of people across generations and ways that they are never imagined. and it is often done so at the direct expense of millions, millions of other people who have been in a generation, we subjugated and oppressed to create that upward mobility. and jefferson is someone within himself wrote in one book and one document that i'm in agree to keep one vote and other documents that black people are inferior to lights and both endowments a body and mind. he wrote one of the most important documents and needs to be the western world. and also we think of a $600.00 people over the course of the lifetime, including for the children that he had plantations, valley coming. and so i wanted to go to manage hello to see how does an institution that is responsible for recapturing conveying the legacy of this person tell an honest whole mystic full story of who this person was and what he represented in the contradiction embodied within his life. and not only that, but how does it tell the story of being late people who lived at monterey hundreds

of people crossing origins and lived and made home and built community and fell in love and got married. and i have had and built live at this place that in many ways was belong to them more than it belonged to jeff and jackson was away in paris in philadelphia and new york in washington dc for extended periods of time. and it was these and laid people off the granger's who made the life and who cultivated and made that land possible and who also made everything jefferson did in his life possible. we cannot understand thomas jefferson, one of the most important founding fathers of our country and all that he contributed to the be the american experiment, without understanding then all of the time that he had all the ideas he was able to wrestle with ref with them right about where possible because of the late labor that he had working for him on his transition said it's hard to believe that in 2021. there are people who do not know that thomas jefferson of slaves. as

a former teacher, what do you think about that or in slave people? i mean, no, i encountered some of those folks when i was at manage. hello, ironically enough. women done in grace who i met when i went to monticello and i went up to them after i went on the slavery at monterey, which is the tour at my children. it focuses specifically on the legacy of slavery and its relationship to jefferson. and i went up to them after and they said it really took the shine off the guy. i had no idea, jeffers, no, i no idea the monitor was what they say, stay clean. when you know, when they said that, what, how to how do you handle that? i think you try to extend whatever grace and generosity you can to people, especially in this context because you are asking strangers questions that are in many ways deeply personal and revealed themselves to be deeply shameful. and so i'm

not attempting to, in this book, to present myself in any way that is sort of antagonistic. i'm not attempting to do a sort of gotcha. like, i can't believe you don't know. what he reflects to me is a profound failure of our public consciousness. profound failure in the way to teach the history of america. please follow. yeah, i think it's it's, it's not shocking because we know that the education system in america could be better. but this is like america 101. and the reality is that for so many people, they have no idea. they have no idea. and it is a reminder, i think for us, for so many of us, we can, it can be easy to forget that there are many people who, who aren't thinking about were engaging with or are ever presented with is history . and so when i was speaking to diamond, great, it was clear that they were there, their foundation was being shaking like the the idea that this founding father,

the person whose home they had come to a sort of a pilgrimage. and they got on planes. they rented cars, they got hotel room, come to the thomas jefferson and had no idea, but he owned human being. and again, what does that reflect for me with an important reminder of the what, how so much so many millions of people in america, in no way understand slavery in any way that is commensurate with the actual impact that it had on this country. and how, how much different, what our understanding of what america look like to be if we had a collective understanding of what has happened. if we had a collective understanding of who our founding fathers actually were. if we had a collective understanding of all that had been done in this country's name and who would have been done at the expense of one of my favorite places you visited, that made me want to go that because you, you tell your story as a novel it's history, in fact, you really met these people when you write it as if we're going on a journey with you than the rater. and it's like a story. have

a look here. this is a thread that i really like one because the self is all a fun. see, because the storytelling that you leave into the thread is really important. i travel to whitney plantation, then you plantation, louisiana. one of the, in the country that is dedicated to telling the story of slavery from the perspective of the and slaved. and i love this place just from the book, from the pages because it felt like i was fair. and what is a guides explained it almost like it was like a history. but if you could be in the book, what was different about 5th plantation yet? women plantation is a remarkable thanks. it is. as i say, one of the only plantations in the country that tell the story of slavery through the perspective of a slave people. and, and the thing is that, that shouldn't be remarkable. but, but it is, it is a place that is surrounded by a constellation of plantations that people continue to hold wedding where people,

you know, i talked to, wedding planners who talked about how sometimes people use the former slave cabins at these other plantations bridal suite. so what does it mean that someone would want to celebrate the most joyous day of their life, arguably on the side of intergenerational torture? and so the whitney plantation is sort of situated in the midst of that, a historic and fundamentally reject the idea that we can understand slavery or understand a plantation, anything other than intergenerational kind of torture. and also that at the same time, while we are understanding the system as one of torture, we are also understand the people as fully human as fully embodied person. and part of what they do is make sure that you are confronting the names and the words and to whatever extent possible the faces of people who had been laid on and off and doing it through the perspective of women and children who in our public again our public consciousness to the extent that there is one about slavery, is often

a very gendered one, that sort of render slavery as a, as a very masculine product phenomenon when it's actually something that impacted women and children. and really specific, insidious ways that whitney has, has made a, made an effort to it's interesting that sherry has a question for you. i'm going to bring that question in in a moment. but the parts of the book, what i really felt you as a man, as a person, was when you were talking about children. when they were in these all 4 situations . as in slave people and the children, most children didn't make it past the age of 5 years. old mother sometimes would kill their kids because they didn't want them to end up. as in slave, young girls, young women were, were assaulted rate year of the year of the year after year. the families were separated, goes on and on and on and on. sherry has this question for you about his question.

dr. smith. thank you so much for how the word this past. we cannot read this book and remain detached. we go through it thinking about how we are connected to these events and also how our families are connected to these legacies. and so my question for you is, how has this project changed you or your outlook as an educator? and as a parent you so much the question sherry one thing that it is done for, for whatever reason. so much of my understanding of slavery, which i think is the effective of have so many people understand. the institution was centered on the spectacle of cruelty which is to save the whipping and the beatings and tally and the, and the work and the torture. right?

that the torture that one experience working in the fields were being subject to sort of the present dominion of the women. the last i think what working on this book did was give me a more shoot understanding the extent that i can have one of the role that family separation played and psychological and emotional terror that is embodied within that. and i think part of that is because i, i was writing it my wife and i had 2 children of our own. so now i have a 4 year old and a 2 year old. and when you just take a moment to sort of think about like if i'm to think about what if, if i were asleep at night and then i woke up and my children were gone, just disappeared in the middle of the night. i can not even bring myself to imagine how even even saying i'm becoming full, but how,

how profoundly horrific that would be. right. the idea that at any moment i'd be separated from my children who would never see them again. and this is something that millions and lay people's lives across generation. that at any moment you can be separated from your children, your parents, your community. and you might never see them again. and i, for some reason i never really, i knew family separation was a part of it clearly, but i never really sat down to reflect on the sort of emotional and psychological implications of that. and i think going to play with me that focus so much on the lives of children really made it much more intimate and sort of visceral sort of exercise to imagine what that must have been marked for, for people to, to know that that could happen at any moment when you talk about african americans

in history, always fills relevant. there's no time where it doesn't feel relevant. so your book you look is very timely, but he's always going to be timely. because african americans are so woven into the history of america. june teams is one example of that. i always was amazed by the story of june 18th, which was that it took a while for all americans and all african americans to realize that slavery has actually ended. and when that word came to galveston in texas, that day was known as june 10th. this is a very brief history. i know clean can do better. but the reason i want to explain that is because we have a commenter who want to ask you about jean. tv, and the whole idea of what you piece means. so this is rashawn. yeah, this is rashawn skiwski me that you could hear my brain cell thinking that rashawn

who sang june 13th is a very special holiday. it is now an official federal holiday in the united states . this is what he has to say about june 10th. june teeth becoming a federal holiday is a big deal in all americans should embrace it as celebrated is june. 18th becomes our 11th federal holiday. but make no mistake, june teeth becoming a holiday is simply symbolic in nature. it does nothing to address the bodily economic, any emotional wounds that slavery put on to black americans. only reparations can help to deal with it. imagine if 156 years after the holocaust, the only thing that germany deal was create a federal holiday. that is the current status of what is happening to black americans in the united states. june 18th can help to continue to educate us to change some of these outcomes. yeah, i absolutely. we will rashawn who we should not mistake the holiday

of june t or a material resources that deserve to be intervene deserve to be given to and repair in order to repair the harm that has been done to certain community. what i'll say about it is, i think of it as a sort of both, and there's a both in this right. it is absolutely true that june 18th, in and of itself is not enough. i would not go as far to say, and i don't think which i'm saying is that it doesn't matter because it doesn't that it does matter that there is now holiday that in its own way, celebrate the end of one of the worst thing that this country i've ever done, and it matters because black activists and specifically black activists in texas have been fighting for recognition of june teeth and have been fighting for june to become a federal holiday for decades and decades and decades. and so if i were to sit here and say it doesn't matter, then i think i would be doing a disservice to the work that some of the black,

one of decades. but with that said to sean point in and of itself is not enough. and i think what we're experience now experiencing now is the sort of marathon of cognitive dissonance that is reflective of the way that american black americans experienced countries since we were brought here. which is to say that you have june 18th because becoming a federal holiday at the same time that there is a state sanctioned effort across state legislatures throughout the country. that is specifically intending to prevent teachers from teaching. the very thing from which the context of june teen emerge. and so you have those things, the legislatures were attempting to prevent black people from having the same access to the franchise as at their counterpart. and so there is a sort of tension that exist there, but, but june teeth matters of the holiday, but in and of itself is not enough. most certainly is a holiday. and so i think we have to whole both of those realities that i have. one

last question for you comes from you to how can the usa prove that he has dealt with a slave owning past? wow, that's fine. oh, many of us show, what would you say, clint? how long do we have? oh man, no pressure. ah, we have to account for what have been done. one thing that i, you know, we've invoke germany a couple times in the show. and germany has something called stumbling stone. and there tens of thousands of these in germany. whereas if you go up to a nike store or mcdonald's, or k, of the youngest in front of some of these places will be a brick and slightly elevated off the ground. a brass brick that has names in inscribed in them who were taken from these homes. and so i think that we did something similar to that, like they do during the holocaust context, slavery. it might go a long way and helping the author of how the world is past the reckoning was the

history of slavery across america. clint smith, thank you for being on the screen today. thank everybody. see you next time. ah, ah ah, ah ah, energy to every part of our universe, or small to continue the change all around the shape by technology and human ingenuity.

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typically i'd like giving voice to the voice here in california. almost. everybody's a paycheck away from being on house program that open your eyes. no toner, if you well today, this is what the picture looks like. see the world from a different perspective. on houses here. ah, hello and barbara, sarah london is these are the top stories on al jazeera, regional forces in t grow. you're threatening to pursue enemy fighter is across the every tray and border active re taking the regional capital on monday. they're being celebrations in mexico. a and the cross the region is local forces claimed victory in the nearly 8 months long conflict with federal troops. if you, if you government announced the unilateral cease fire with immediate effect, but it's clear if it's being observed, malcolm web has.