Jonathan Capehart chronicles his journey toward self-discovery in 'Yet Here I Am'

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: On Friday nights, you see Jonathan Capehart alongside David Brooks discussing the big political stories of the week.

But it was a long journey that led him to the “News Hour” and his work at The Washington Post and MSNBC.

Jonathan shares his life story and his new memoir, “Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home.”

Amna spoke with Jonathan about his memoir, which is out today.

Amna Nawaz: Jonathan Capehart, I want to say welcome to the “News Hour,” but welcome back, and it’s good to see you on this set.

Jonathan Capehart, Author, “Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home”: Thank you very much, Amna. This is very lovely what you have here.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz: It’s very lovely. It’s a different view altogether.

Jonathan Capehart: Yes.

Amna Nawaz: People who know your work will get a chance to know a lot more about your life and what made you, you today. You write about growing up in New Jersey, raised by your mom. You also say that you spent summers with your family in North Carolina, which you say was key to developing who you are today.

You write in the book: “My views on race, my sense of place in the American story took root there.”

How so?

Jonathan Capehart: So, in New Jersey, during the school year, I went to Catholic school. In the summers until I was 12, I went down South to my maternal grandparents’ house, where my grandmother was a Jehovah’s Witness.

And so I went out witnessing with my grandmother on those country back roads. And it was there — the seminal thing that happened that stuck with me from then until adulthood was going to these houses of almost always African Americans, older African Americans, and being in their houses and seeing what I started calling the holy Black trinity.

There are always three portraits, sometimes four, in Black homes. And there are always portraits of Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Jesus Christ. Some homes had a fourth, and that was Robert F. Kennedy.

And so, to me, as I got older and learned about who these three people were and then understanding what he meant to all of those people, that was one thing that was very cementing for me, but also, as I write in the book, the contrast between me and my grandmother and the people we were witnessing to…

Amna Nawaz: Yes.

Jonathan Capehart: … and the lessons I learned from my grandmother about what it means to be in service, what it means to relate to other people, a real sense of humility.

But, also in this town, it’s sort of like a little Jim Crow relic in terms of grandma and granddaddy living on what became known as South Street, originally unpaved, right across — their backyard faced Main Street, which was this wide, paved, beautifully paved boulevard, which is where white people lived in Severn.

Amna Nawaz: There’s a big moment in your career as you become a journalist and you join The New York Daily News and you’re among this esteemed group to win a Pulitzer. It’s for a series of 1998 editorials that exposed basically the financial management at this iconic Harlem landmark the Apollo Theater.

And you’re celebrated for your journalism, but you also write this. You say: “Lots of Black people were angry with me. They called me everything from a sellout to Uncle Tom for going after Rangel and Sutton, those two legendary, trailblazing New York Black lawmakers.

Jonathan Capehart: Right.

Amna Nawaz: Did that response surprise you? What did you take away from that?

Jonathan Capehart: The response didn’t surprise me.

There is always a protective circle around African American elected officials. And yet writing editorials that put — that cast them in a negative light was one that a lot of Black people were like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this?

Amna Nawaz: And, specifically, what are you doing as a Black journalist?

Jonathan Capehart: Yes, what am — right, what am I doing?

And as I write in the book, I knew this was going to happen, which was why I went to Harlem constantly to make myself a presence, to understand Harlem, to learn, to learn the characters and what was going on at the Apollo Theater, and to understand that what was happening at the Apollo was not — no one was stealing money from the theater.

What was happening was, the theater was being robbed of its potential.

Amna Nawaz: You know, you write about your time at The Washington Post as well, and joining the editorial board, and you write very deeply about why you chose to leave the board as well at a time that you were not feeling valued and felt like your voice was being ignored.

But the thing that struck me about your time on the board was you note that, for years, you were the only Black member of that editorial board. That seemed really surprising at The Washington Post, and I just wonder what that was like for you in those years.

Jonathan Capehart: I had a role and a job to do, and that was to be the voice and the experience the people who weren’t at the table.

Being the lone African American voice around that table was difficult a lot of the times, but, if I hadn’t been there, who would have been there to talk about police-involved shootings of unarmed African American men to at least be a representative of the community around the table? That was the benefit of the job, but with that benefit came — and there’s a lot of weight with that, that just became too heavy and too much to bear as time went on.

Amna Nawaz: So, I said this to you when I first began to read the book, but you really went there in this book. I texted you and I was like, wow.

There are stories that are uncomfortable at times, I’m sure, to rethink and share, professional and also personal stories. There’s a tale about a box of your belongings. I’m not going to get into details, but unfurling in front of your mother. And I can’t get it out of my head.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz: But you didn’t hold back. And a lot of people who write memoirs will sanitize them. It’ll become kind of a listing of a resume. You don’t clean this up.

Jonathan Capehart: Yes.

Amna Nawaz: Why not?

Jonathan Capehart: Because I wanted people to really get to know me.

I am very cognizant of the fact that a nice tie and a nice suit and the way I live my life projects one image of me. And I think, sometimes, it leads people to have misperceptions of me, leading to some people thinking that, oh, well, does he know he’s Black, or is he — does he know he is among us?

I can’t impart the lessons that I learned without writing about the hard things I had to go through in order to learn them. Living through the hard parts, the tough parts, coming through on the other side, being able to share those lessons, so that, if someone else is going through the same thing, that maybe they either see some part of themselves in the stories that I’m telling, or maybe find some solace in the lessons that I have learned, and I’m telling them, I’m showing them, then that’s — I mean, that would be bigger than anyone buying the book.

If someone comes to me and says, oh, my God, you helped me so much by what you wrote, I mean, that’s everything.

Amna Nawaz: The book is “Yet Here I Am.” The author is none other than Jonathan Capehart.

Jonathan, great to see you.

Jonathan Capehart: You too, Amna.

Amna Nawaz: Thanks for being here.

Jonathan Capehart: Thank you.