The American story is often packaged as a linear climb toward a “more perfect union”. But for many Black families, history feels less like a ladder and more like a pendulum—swinging between hard‑won breakthroughs and the inevitable backlashes that follow.
Join Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and commentator Eugene Robinson for an exploration of this rhythmic history. Moving beyond headlines and isolated shocks, Robinson draws on the two‑century journey of his own family—the heart of his memoir Freedom Lost, Freedom Won—to show how national politics are lived, felt, and
carried across generations.
This is not a traditional book talk, but a guided conversation. How can one family’s two‑century journey help us see the larger cycles that shape American history? Why does progress so often spark periods of retrenchment, and how do those shifts feel from perspectives that are too often overlooked? And what might it take to imagine a future that breaks these patterns rather than repeats them?
Moderated by Anissa Durham.
Join the conversation.
Speakers
Eugene Robinson
Eugene Robinson is a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist, former columnist, and
associate editor of The Washington Post, author, and political analyst. His prior positions included foreign editor, London correspondent, and South American
correspondent. Born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, he graduated from the University
of Michigan and worked at the San Francisco Chronicle before joining The Washington
Post.
Anissa Durham
Anissa Durham is an award-winning independent health care journalist. In 2026, she won the inaugural NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Journalism for her series On Borrowed Time. Her reporting expertise includes racial justice, government accountability,
investigative work, data, explanatory journalism, and infrastructure.
Durham holds a bachelors degree in integrated marketing communications from National University and an associates degree in journalism from San Diego Mesa College. Her work has appeared in
STAT, CalMatters, The Markup, Word In Black, and more.