Clint Smith's radical faith that Americans can learn new facts -- and be changed by them

Talking to the author of a powerful new book of reportage about how America remembers, and misremembers, its past

Like me and maybe like you, Clint Smith was miseducated.

Miseducated about the origins of his country, the United States. Miseducated about the Civil War that almost tore it apart. Miseducated about the layers of history that shaped his own life as a Black man.

In some of the most poignant moments of his magnificent new book, “How the Word Is Passed: A Re…