FREEDOM LOST, FREEDOM WON: American History Through a Black Family’s Story
5:00pm - 6:00pm
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?
Join the conversation.
Moderated by Anissa Durham.
