A civics lesson, a work of cultural reclamation, and a beautiful and brilliant meditation on the persistence of the past. Discover poet, educator, and co-host of Pod Save the People Clint Smith's bold first-person retelling of Black American history.

It's hardly a secret that mobility has always been limited, if not impossible, for African Americans. Before the Civill War, masters confined their slaves to their property, while free black people found themselves regularly stopped, questioned, and even kidnapped. Restrictions on movement before emancipation carried over, in different forms, into Reconstruction and beyond; for most of the twentieth century, many white Americans felt blithely comfortable...