PROGRAM
Roosevelt House is pleased to present a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart about his new memoir Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home. Honest and inspirational, Yet Here I Am recounts powerful stories from Capehart’s life about embracing identity, picking battles, seizing opportunity, and finding his voice. The author will be in conversation with MSNBC political analyst, and former Roosevelt House Public Policy Program director, Basil Smikle Jr.
Long before the success that made Capehart one of the most recognizable faces in cable news, he spent his boyhood growing up without his father, shuttling back and forth between New Jersey and the rural South, and contemplating the complexities of race and identity as they shifted around him. Bridging the two worlds, as he writes, was never easy; whether being told he was too smart or not smart enough, too Black or not Black enough, Capehart struggled to find his place. Then, an internship at The Today Show altered the course of his life and brought him one step closer to his dream of a career in journalism.
Yet Here I Am invites readers on a journey from Capehart’s years at Carleton College, where he learns to embrace his identity as a gay Black man surrounded by a likeminded community; to his decision to come out to his family, risking rejection; and finally, to New York City, where, despite some stumbles and setbacks, he blazes a path to success as an indispensable voice in today’s cable news.
Jonathan Capehart is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-host of the morning edition of The Weekend on MSNBC. From 2020 until 2025, he was anchor of MSNBC’s The Saturday Show and The Sunday Show. His MSNBC special “A Promised Land: A Conversation with Barack Obama” was nominated in 2021 for an Emmy for Outstanding News Discussion & Analysis. He is a former associate editor and opinion writer at the Washington Post, and served as a member of the Washington Post editorial board from 2007 to 2023. Capehart is also an analyst on The PBS News Hour. He was deputy editorial page editor of the New York Daily News (2002-2004) and served on its editorial board (1993-2000); his editorial campaign in 1999 to save the Apollo Theater earned the board the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing.
Dr. Basil Smikle Jr. is the Director of the M.S. program in nonprofit management in the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University. As an MSNBC political analyst, he regularly shares his insights on national media outlets. With 20 years in higher education and 30 years devoted to public service, his expertise spans civic engagement, nonprofit advocacy and communications, electoral politics, and education policy. He is a recipient of the New York Urban League Community Service Award; the Bronx Branch NAACP W.E.B. Dubois Scholar Award; and a Proclamation from the New York City Council in recognition of his commitment to public service and education equity. From 2021 to 2024, Smikle served as Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Program.
