- [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided by Panonica Foundation, Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Ascension Seton, BP America, Laura and John Beckworth, St.

David's HealthCare, and by... And also by... A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

- You have to put your nose down and stand in your expertise and in your knowledge of yourself and force the world to see what you see in yourself.

No one's going to give you anything.

(grand music) (grand music fades) - Welcome to the LBJ Presidential Library.

I'm Mark Updegrove.

Since the library was dedicated over half a century ago by our 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, it has hosted some of the biggest names and best minds of our day to discuss our nation's rich history and the issues of our times.

Now, we bring those conversations straight to you.

Jonathan Capehart is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, co-host of MS NOW's "The Weekend," and a fixture as half of the Brooks Capehart duo on the "PBS NewsHour."

He's also the author of the memoir "Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man's Search for Home."

Tonight, he talks about his unlikely path to a career in broadcast journalism, the realities of race in America today, and the tenuous state of American democracy.

Jonathan Capehart, welcome.

- Thank you, Mark.

- And congratulations on "Yet Here I Am."

- Thank you.

- Let's start with that title, "Yet Here I Am."

Why?

- Well, it is actually the very last sentence in the book, after you've read all about my life and all the stories that I tell, and I talk about the fact that, you know, I am the only child of a widow whose father died at four months old, African American, gay, and you, if you believed popular myth and stereotypes and everything, the life that I live now, the career that I've been able to make for myself, the life I've been able to make for myself, that just wouldn't, if you believe those things, I wouldn't be possible.

And yet here I am.

- Why did you defy the odds?

You talk about that in the book, why you?

- That's an interesting question and that's a great question.

I've never had it put to me that way.

I don't know why me.

I don't know, I mean, is it because I knew what I wanted to do since I was about 10 years old and had sort of, now in hindsight, a maniacal sort of single-minded focus on what I wanted to do and not allowing anything or anyone get in the way, get in my way of doing that.

Meaning not having someone's preconceived notions, not having someone's limitations, not having someone's bad thoughts about me or anything that they might do to stop me from getting in my way.

- You point out in the book that you were born three years to the day after the signing of the Civil Rights Act, and a little less than two years after the signing of the Voting Rights Act, and you write, "The democracy that emerged, may be part of the first generation of Black kids born in deure freedom.

And the years that followed from my childhood in predominantly white schools to my adulthood, ensconced in predominantly white spaces, I viewed my role as an ambassador to the race, an interlocutor between Blacks and whites."

So what has that role, playing, that role, meant to your life?

- Well, on the one hand, playing that role has, you know, pushed me out there.

Look, I'm an introvert, actually.

I am a very shy person.

But it pushed me out there to go talk to people, meet people, make friends, make long lasting and enduring friendships and relationships.

On the other hand, when you have this ambassadorial mindset, what comes with that sometimes are a lot of unsatisfactory or unpleasant interactions where, you know, you are, I've been confronted with the idea that not everybody's gonna like you.

Not everyone's going to like you because you're Black.

Not everyone's going to like you because you're gay.

And, you know, that hurts.

It's not nice.

But I also know that that has more to do with them than me.

- Right.

- And so, I spend my time with people who are as generous and as open with who they are and their time as I think I am giving to them.

- How do you see the state of race in America today?

- Fraught.

But as a small s student of history, I see how we have advanced, but I also see, you know, at the macro level, there's so many things that have, they're unchanged, from when President Johnson was in the White House when he was pushing through the Great Society and voting rights and civil rights and all the things that he did.

I do think that when we talk about race, we're doing so at a much higher level, if you can say that, than we were when I first became a journalist in the early 90s.

Remember President Clinton and his, "Let's have a national conversation on race."

That was a little controversial, then.

Today, we are having, and have been having a national conversation on race that is light years ahead of what President Clinton was asking the nation to do.

And I know for a lot of people, we are not where we should be.

We're not where we need to be.

That a lot of the advancements have been rolled back.

But again, as a student of history, I see that where we are when it comes to race relations in this country, we are over here.

Whereas this is where we've come from.

Not very far, but at least we're moving ahead.

And, you know, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, you know, there's lots of backlash since then.

But we were in the middle of a pandemic.

People were locked in their homes.

But watching that nine plus minute video of a man losing his life, literally under the knee of law enforcement, people who were charged with keeping a community safe, that pushed people out of their homes and pushed them out of their homes to say on a whole host of levels, "What we just witnessed was not right."

It was morally repugnant.

It was illegal.

It was something that is affecting a whole community that is in pain.

And particularly for the non-African Americans who took to the streets, it was a demonstration that "We saw what happened, we see your pain, and we're out here showing that we acknowledge it and we want something done about it."

Now, having said that, the backlash to that has been intense.

But again, as a student of history, we have seen this, we have been through these types of backlashes before, which is why I am always optimistic about where we will be five, 10 years down the road.

I mean, think about it, when President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in '64 and the Voting Rights Act in '65, what had we come through?

Political assassinations, bombings, so many bombings in Birmingham, Alabama, that it was called Bombingham.

People literally putting their lives on the line for just the simple right to vote as guaranteed in the Constitution.

We're not living through anything like that right now.

That's not to discount the things that are happening, but imagine if we were going through today what Americans were going through 60 years ago.

We're not dealing with that.

And yet we have our challenges that we have to deal with.

But again, because I know where we've been, I know we are going to come through this moment that we're in, in a much stronger, much better place because the American people, I believe, are looking at what's happening around them, and they're saying, "This is not who we are.

This is not what I want our country to be, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure we get back on track."

- There seems to be in the African American community, this understanding around those cycles somehow, and if not patience, just the knowledge that things are going to slip and that they might, there might be ground that is gained afterward.

Is that a fair characterization?

- Absolutely.

Well, I think that's what I've been alluding to.

I think we as a people, again, here I am being the ambassador, right?

But think about, patience, it's a good word.

Because with patience, sort of in there is hope.

African Americans brought here in chains in 1619, forced to work for free under horrible conditions, abused, sometimes violently, more often than not violently.

And that lasted for a couple centuries.

The negro spirituals that came up, all about hope and the Promised Land and everything, that isn't so much patience as a better day is coming.

- Right.

- And so you go from that to the end of slavery and you've got Reconstruction, and then Jim Crow comes in, and still the hope of the better day never left.

Now, Jim Crow was no walk in the park, but was, you know, a shade better than enslavement.

And still during Jim Crow, a better day is going to come.

And also, you know, the documents, the founding documents of this country also fueled that patience, fueled that hope.

You can't tell a people, in documents, "We, the people," you can't say that all men are created equal, who are given, you know, inalienable rights by their creator and not have them believe them.

So when you're African American, no matter what generation you are in, we have that history behind us.

We have watched, we have learned, we have become experts, not only in America, but experts in white people and white supremacy.

We've had to, that has been part of our survival.

And so we can call it patience, we can call it keeping our eyes on the prize.

We can also call it maintaining that hope, because it's that hope that keeps us grounded, that keeps us clear-eyed, and also allows us to be able to say to our fellow Americans, "Yo, there's danger coming.

Danger is coming.

Listen to us."

And of course, I'm alluding to the 2016 election and also the '24 election.

- Right, right.

- I mean, I remember I was asked by a newspaper, you know, "What's the one thing you think, you hope for in the coming year?"

Or something like that.

And I said, "I hope that people will start listening to Black women."

Because, you know, from Black women voters in 2016 and 2020, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris, remember, these are Black people with ancestral knowledge and wisdom saying, "Listen to what I'm telling you.

Listen to what he's saying.

We know what he's saying."

And yet the country decided to go in a different direction.

But I do think that the patience and the wisdom and the hope of African Americans, all of those things are what's, I think, and I hope, and I pray, will keep American democracy from truly going off the rails.

- What do you say to a young Jonathan Capehart today who maybe has more opportunity than you might have when you started out in your career, but still doesn't see a level playing field?

- Hmm.

Well, the one thing I would say to them is turn the mirror inside.

Especially if they have dreams and aspirations.

And ask themselves, "What do you want to do?

Is that what you really want to do?

Are you good at it?

Do you believe that you're good at it?

Do you know that you're good at it?"

And if your answer is yes, especially to those last few questions, then the only thing stopping you from achieving those aspirations might be you.

You have to put your nose down and stand in your expertise and in your knowledge of yourself, and force the world to see what you see in yourself.

No one's going to give you anything.

And that applies to anyone of any race, gender, creed, whatever.

But I know from my life, there's a lot of lessons in my book, but the number one lesson is when someone asks you what you want, tell them.

I was a senior in high school, and my uncle was an electrician at NBC, and he knew I was a big NBC news fanatic, that I wanted to be, you know, work, I wanted to be a news commentator.

I wanted to work for the "TODAY" show.

And after my Carlton interview in New York, I called him and said, "Hey, can I come to NBC to run around 30 Rock?"

And he said, "Sure."

And I get there and he said, "Hey, you're just in time.

I have to do some work in the 'Nightly News' office."

And he's like, "Do you wanna come with me?"

He knew the answer was yes.

And I was so excited because I thought I was going to see all of my heroes who I'd seen on television.

And no one was there.

It was early, it was nine AM, it was, no one was around, except this one woman sitting at her desk.

I was seated on a sofa.

And she was about this close to me, and she was reading a paper, drinking coffee, and eating a bagel.

And I sat and I stared at her, trying to work up the courage to talk to her.

And I finally did introduce myself.

She told me her name is Ann Skekeltarian, and she worked at "Nightly."

And then you see a little kid sitting across from you, and so you, of course, what do you ask?

"So what do you wanna be when you grow up?"

And so I said to her, "Well, I wanna be Moscow correspondent for NBC, and then I'm trying to decide between the London Bureau and the White House.

But if I go to London, then I definitely wanna go to the White House, and then I'm gonna come to New York and be anchor of the 'TODAY' show."

I don't remember the look on her face.

I know what the look on my face would've been if I had been confronted by something like that.

My uncle comes back and says, "It's time to go."

I thanked her for talking to me and answering my questions, and she said, "Wait a minute."

And she pulled out an NBC notepad, wrote down the name of Kay Bradley and her phone number and ripped it off and with a flourish, "Here, get yourself an internship on the 'TODAY' show."

I tell that story to young people, to say to them, you have dreams.

Everyone has dreams.

People go through life having their dreams stomped on, negated, people telling them, planting little seeds of doubt in their own abilities.

And so when someone asks them what they want, they'll shy away from saying it because they don't want that dream snuffed out.

They just know that if they put it out into the world, that something or someone is going to kill that dream.

And I say, on the other hand, tell someone.

Tell them for two reasons.

One, saying the dream out loud makes it real.

It puts it out into the world.

You can actually manifest what you want to happen.

I'm right here to tell you that that is the case.

And the other thing is, you never know what the answer's going to be.

For me, I can count three times in my life, that being the first time, when I was asked what I wanted, and I said, I told them, and I got it.

And so if that can happen to me, that can happen to anyone who hears me tell this story.

- There's a wonderful vignette in the book where you're interacting with one of your heroes on that NBC set, Bryant Gumbel.

And it's very revealing.

Talk about that little scene in the book.

- So when I was an intern at the "TODAY" show, I always stood on the set.

I got there as fast as I could.

That was when it was from seven until nine.

I was on set by 7:30 every morning.

And I stood for 90 minutes, sometimes more if they were doing post tapes, to just watch.

I wanted to see what was happening on the show, where people were when other things were happening.

But also wanted to watch my hero.

Wanted to watch him in action.

That first summer, you know, maybe I was, as I say, you know, the stalker intern who, you know, watching your hero.

And I thought that, you know, Bryant was cold to me, didn't really acknowledge my existence.

If I tried to talk to him, it was always awkward.

So when I got the internship the second summer, I'm standing on the set and I see him, and he's approaching me.

And I had this whole conversation in my head with myself, "Oh, here he comes.

You know, he doesn't even know you're alive, doesn't acknowledge your existence.

Well, I'll show him.

I'm not even going to say hello to him.

I'm just going to ignore him the way he ignores me."

And he gets closer, and then he passes me by.

And I felt that snub in my soul.

That "Oh my god.

He did it again."

Then something happened a nanosecond later, I felt a tap on my back.

And I heard him say, "Welcome back."

And what that told me was one, that entire chorus that was going on in my head was just my own insecurities.

But it also taught me a second lesson.

And that is, when you think no one notices you or isn't paying attention to you, that's you and your insecurity.

You are giving so much information to people that you don't even notice.

And people are watching, people are paying attention.

I thought he didn't even think I was around or I was alive.

And in fact, he knew exactly who I was.

He knew exactly what I did there.

And the fact that he said "Welcome back," he knew that I was back.

That I was there to do a good job.

And, you know, there's nothing, was nothing more thrilling than, you know, going from kid Jonathan, intern Jonathan, to full fledged adult Jonathan, who's friends now with his hero.

And when I got my first television show contract, I sent him an email and said, "Hey, I would love to take you to lunch as a thank you."

And he wrote something back like, "Oh, no need to thank me kid, that's all you, but I'll take the lunch."

(Jonathan chuckling) - We are celebrating our country's 250th birthday, and yet our democracy seems to be under threat.

How do you explain that?

- Oh, our democracy doesn't seem to be under threat.

It is under threat.

You know, at the end of, during the transition of Trump's first term, after the 2016 election, was paying attention to what he was doing, what he was saying, and the norms he was busting then.

And it was then that I understood that all the lessons that I learned about our Constitution, made of granite, it's, you know, indestructible.

Nothing can happen to it.

And I was watching him and I realized, "You know, the Constitution actually is extremely fragile."

That the only reason why it has withstood, you know, two centuries, almost two and a half centuries, is because the Constitution is only as strong as the men so far who have sworn to uphold it.

Men of character, men of conscience, men who put the nation ahead of themselves.

But what we're seeing is what happens when the person who has sworn to uphold the Constitution doesn't view it as bedrock foundation, but maybe views it as even less than a suggestion.

And then when you have a Congress that doesn't want to exercise its Article I responsibility of being a check and balance on the executive, that's something that also gnaws away at our constitutional order.

Gnaws away at the rule of law, gnaws away at the Constitution itself.

That's why I say, yeah, our democracy is in danger.

But again, I have to come back to a hopeful note.

There is the ultimate check on either executive abuses or legislative abuses or judicial abuses.

And that's the people.

That is the American people.

And if the American people are concerned about what's happening to their country, the direction of their country, the danger that the Constitution is in, they have the ultimate authority.

They have the ultimate power.

And they can exercise that at the ballot box.

And if we don't exercise the power that we have, then we have no right to complain when things go sour, when things go south for us.

- What does your story say about the country that nurtured you?

- Oh, it says wonderful things about this country.

I'm the Black, gay, only child of a widow who, you know, was born in Newark, New Jersey.

A kid who had big dreams and no roadmap to get there.

I was the nerd in the family saying, "I'm gonna be a news commentator."

And there were no journalists, no writers, no one on television news in my family.

And yet here I am.

That can only happen in this country.

- The book is "Yet Here I Am," our guest is Jonathan Capehart, Jonathan, thanks so much for coming.

- Thanks so much, Mark.

(grand music) (grand music continues) (grand music continues) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided by Panonica Foundation, Judy and Peter Bulm Kovler Foundation, Ascension Seton, BP America, Laura and John Beckworth, St.

David's HealthCare, and by... And also by... A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

(cheerful music) (upbeat music)