About The Episode

The killing of George Floyd by a police officer in 2020 sparked massive protests nationwide. This hour, writer and scholar Clint Smith reflects on this moment, through conversation, letters, and poetry.

About Clint Smith

Clint Smith is a writer, poet, teacher, and Emerson Fellow at New America.

He is the author of the poetry collection, Counting Descent, which was published in 2016. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review, among others. His most recent piece, "Becoming a Parent in the Age of Black Lives Matter," was published in The Atlantic earlier this week. His forthcoming non-fiction book, How The Word Is Passed, explores how different sites across the country reckon with, or fail to reckon with, their relationship to the history of slavery. It will be published next year.

Smith's two TED Talks, "The Danger of Silence" and "How to Raise a Black Son in America," have collectively been viewed more than seven million times. The latter was featured on the TED Radio Hour episode, "The Consequences of Racism."

Previously, Clint Smith taught high school English in Prince George's County, Maryland. He currently teaches writing and literature in the D.C. Central Detention Facility.

He received his B.A. from Davidson College and his Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he studied the sociology of education.

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