Clint Smith

If a student writes “This is a metaphor for Arsenal being top of the league!” in their analysis of any of my poems they should automatically receive an A

If they are a Tottenham fan they get a D no matter what they wrote

I don’t care if Arsenal wins are ugly, beautiful, blue, green, or purple. Big three points from the boys. Big big result.

The Trump Administration Can’t Kill Black History Month We don’t need permission from the government to commemorate a complex past.

Last week, my mother took me and my kids to see the school where, 60 years ago, she was among the first wave of Black students to integrate a previously all-White school. We wanted to remind my kids that Black history is not just famous people in textbooks, it is often the people right next to you.

The Trump Administration Can’t Kill Black History Month We don’t need permission from the government to commemorate a complex past.

Last week, my mother took me and my kids to see the school where, 60 years ago, she was among the first wave of Black students to integrate a previously all-White school. We wanted to remind my kids that Black history is not just famous people in textbooks, it is often the people right next to you.

COME ON YOU GUNNERS

I feel so invested in Eze succeeding this makes me so happy

THERE WE GO BIG VIK MORE OF THAT PLEASE

Arsenal can never just make this easy

Concerned about ICE's $45 billion plan to convert warehouses into immigration detention centers? This is what they'll look like inside. From ICE's plan for the Social Circle, GA facility. Each little dot: a person. www.socialcirclega.gov/home/showpub...

Trump’s Backlash to Black History The efforts to whitewash history call for a new approach to memorializing Black history.

Talked about all of this, and more, on Radio Atlantic with @hannarosin.bsky.social and @clintsmithiii.bsky.social: www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/202...

Black History Month Is Radical Now A nation that wants to forget its past must be reminded of all of it.

I have a new essay out this morning about Black History Month, remembering in a moment when those in power want us to forget, and the importance of seeing people in the past as people www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Irma you knew they were never going to make this easy for us 😭

The fact that Brentford is so good after selling three of their best players and losing their coach is wild. Kudos to them, they outplayed us tonight.

photo of HOW THE WORD IS PASSED by Clint Smith and Sonja Cherry-Paul

2026 Jane Addams Book Award Honoree HOW THE WORD IS PASSED (ADAPTED FOR YOUNG READERS): REMEMBERING SLAVERY AND HOW IT SHAPED AMERICA by @clintsmithiii.bsky.social, adapted by @sonjacherrypaul.bsky.social

www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/clint...

The Big Vik + Kai link up is what we’ve been waiting for

Raising children to be kind, thoughtful, and empathetic. Raising children to feel loved, affirmed, and proud despite what is being told to them by some of the country's most powerful people is something generations of Black Americans have had to do. And still, it came at a cost to them too.

The behavior is not new, he has demonstrated over and over again who he is both through rhetoric and through policy. But there remains, I think, a cost in the ceaselessness of it all. To constantly have to tell your children that the president is wrong, is lying, is malicious, and is hateful.

Was driving my kids to school and the first thing on the radio was reporting about Trump's video depicting the Obamas as apes and I think many people still don't fully appreciate what it means to have to raise Black children in a country where the president is so brazenly and consistently racist

lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · 49m I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone. I have no words. I'm devastated. Quote lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · Jan 25 Waking up without power, heat, or running water. (Again.) But the work here in Kyiv continues. Warming up in the car, writing in pencil — pen ink freezes — by headlamp.

INBOX: Washington Post Ukraine Correspondent Lizzie Johnson announces that she has been laid off in the middle of a below-freezing war zone without power, heat, or running water.

Nearly 30,000 Minnesotans trained as constitutional observers The Immigrant Defense Network works with more than 100 organizations to help train constitutional observers. At the end of November, there were 2,500 trained observers. That number has soared as more ...

A manager for the Immigrant Defense Network told MPR News that back in November, 2,500 people were trained as constitutional observers. Now, the total is nearly 30,000 trained observers in 77 of Minnesota's 87 counties.

Kai Havertz is truly an example of not appreciating what you have until it’s gone for a while

So I’m going to watch season two obviously. But if I’m stepping back into the Star Wars universe post-Andor, what is the best order to watch in?

!

Admittedly, I’ve never been a huge Star Wars guy, but I just finished season one of Andor and holy moly what a show. Talk about television that speaks to the moment. Those last three episodes in particular will stick with me for a long time.

Weekends are always better when they start with an Arsenal win

What America Lost When It Lost Mother Fletcher With nearly all of the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre now dead, the country must find other ways to rectify its wrongs.

The survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre “became, late in life, the subject of national recognition, because that’s what America is good at—celebrating survivors of the harm the country allowed, not compensating for the misfortune it has caused.”

Benfica OMG

Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs. The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Those Who Try to Erase History Will Fail Montgomery shows what’s possible when museums aren’t subject to capricious executive orders.

The Atlantic's Clint Smith (@clintsmithiii.bsky.social) visited the Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama—spaces that he says "shows what's possible when museums aren't subject to capricious executive orders."

Historical Marker text: The Dirty Business of Slavery The President's House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation. Read here https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=146650

For so long, history of slavery was censored, incl. role of U.S. presidents. After years of organizing, incl. #BlackLivesMatter, schools & public places started reckoning w/ truth telling. Read "How the Word Is Passed" by @clintsmithiii.bsky.social
www.zinnedproject.org/materials/ho...
Now . . . 🧵