Journalist and cohost of MSNBC’s The Weekend, Jonathan Capehart has long been a trusted voice in American political analysis, known for his sharp insight and unflinching candor. Case in point: he recently left The Washington Post after nearly two decades, unapologetically citing the new editorial direction of the newspaper under owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as his reason.
In his new memoir, Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home (Grand Central Publishing, May 2025), Capehart trains his journalistic eye on himself, tracing his journey as a gay Black man in America with warmth, honesty, and a deep sense of purpose. Recently, he opened up to Martha’s Vineyard Magazine about listening, legacy, growing up in the South, and what it truly means to find home. An edited transcript follows.
Martha’s Vineyard Magazine: Let’s start with your new book, which is part memoir, part meditation on American democracy. Did the process of writing it leave you feeling more hopeful about where we are as a country – or more concerned?
Jonathan Capehart: More hopeful! How could I not be more hopeful when telling my own story? Even with its trials and tribulations, I can see how my story is only possible in America. And, as I end the book, I point out this paragraph from David Blight’s biography of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (Simon & Schuster, 2018), where he basically does a survey of Douglass’s life: born into slavery, escapes slavery, becomes world famous, fights for women’s suffrage, sees the end of slavery, and lived long enough to see all of it reversed. When I read it, it hit me that I was reading that paragraph as a free, out, gay, Black, married man in the jobs that I have. And so how could I not be optimistic for our country when my own – my own! – story, and my own history, demands that I be optimistic?
MVM: You’ve spent your career asking questions on the page and on the screen. What was it like to examine your own story?
JC: In my column writing, I’ve always been a little personal. When writing about politics, one of the best ways to get people to understand is to tell the story through someone. If I didn’t have someone else for whom to tell the story, especially if my own history were relevant, I would put myself into the column....
Column writing is 750 words. Book writing is however long you need to go to tell the story, so it allowed me to further interrogate myself and not be afraid. As my friend Richie Jackson says, “Don’t be afraid to put yourself on every page.” His book, Gay Like Me: A Father Writes to His Son (HarperCollins, 2020), was a very personal memoir.
Katharine Graham’s memoir, Personal History (Vintage, 1998), and Charles M. Blow’s memoir, Fire Shut Up in My Bones (Mariner Books, 2015) – those were foundations I had when I was thinking of writing mine. What made those two biographies or memoirs so powerful was how open and honest and raw they were about their feelings, their shortcomings, their insecurities. I thought, “If I were ever to write a biography or a memoir, that’s my template.” So, to be able to actually do it is really terrific.
MVM: You write a lot about listening, especially through the lens of key people in your life. How did those connections shape you?
JC: One of the keys of being a good reporter and a good interviewer is listening – listening to what people are saying, but, more importantly, listening to what they aren’t saying. Once I started listening and trusting my inner voice, things started to fall into place, because once you know who you are, there’s nothing you can’t do or overcome.
MVM: Are there any conversations you hope this book will start?
JC: I hope that my book opens the eyes of white people to what their Black friends might be going through at the office, particularly when I talk about what it’s like being the only one or one of a few Black people in a predominately white space. I hope…that they understand that when we leave our homes it is a completely different experience than when they leave their homes. And maybe my book will be that opportunity for someone to start the conversation and say, “Hey, I just read Capehart’s book, have you gone through something like this? Tell me about it.”
MVM: What’s one uncomfortable truth that you hope sticks with readers?
JC: Ah, there is one. It’s on page fifty where I write about how to be Black in white spaces and how my mother – as every Black parent has told their children – said, “You have to be twice as good to be considered just as good as your white peers.” I go on to write that if you are ever considered such, know that it comes grudgingly and even then, the world will remind you of where it believes your place to be.
MVM: You’ve interviewed many powerful voices. Whose voices do you think that we, as a country, aren’t hearing enough from or aren’t understanding their message?
JC: That’s an interesting question. I don’t think we as a nation take women’s voices – and, in particular, Black women’s voices – seriously. We have had the opportunity twice to elect a woman, and both women warned us about what would happen, and the nation didn’t listen. In each instance, the nation has had to live through the exact things they warned us would happen.
At what point will we finally listen to women? Those women leaders who put themselves on the line to run this country, it’s not enough to elect them senator or governor. That’s great, that’s wonderful, but at what point are we going to listen to a woman that says, “Make me commander in chief”?
MVM: You write about growing up Black and gay in the South, navigating two worlds that didn’t always feel like they had room for all of you. How did that experience shape your understanding of home? Has your definition of home changed over time?
JC: Certainly, my definition of home has changed over time. In the early years, growing up and spending my summers in the South, I was too young to know how my identities were at play during that time. But as I’ve gotten older, and especially in writing the book, I zeroed in on this notion of home…. It can be a person, it can be a place, it can be a thing. It’s whatever makes you feel the most you. I feel the most me when I’m in NYC, when I’m in Rome, and, more recently, when I’m on Martha’s Vineyard.
When it comes to people, obviously there’s my mom, and my husband, and dear friends…. If anything, in writing this book, I discovered that my life has been a constant search for home or, as I’ve translated it, a constant search to be comfortable, to feel safe. To be myself.
MVM: The Island has long been a gathering place for Black excellence. What’s your own relationship to the Vineyard, and what does the Island mean to you?
JC: For a few years, [former Obama adviser] Valerie Jarrett and her cousin Ann Walker Marchant would say to me, “You should come to the Vineyard!” And I just thought they were being nice. I had only been once [for a wedding in 2008]. I came back to the Island in August of 2017 to do a part in a HistoryMakers interview, but only for a few days…. The following year, we came back for a week.
MVM: What was that like?
JC: That first trip back, my husband [Nick Schmit], who is a white North Dakotan, we both looked at each other and started this conversation about how much we loved the Island. He said, “I love how diverse it is.” To me, what makes it so special is – of all the hotsy-totsy places to go on vacation – this was the first time I had seen Black people on vacation: families riding bikes, children running without a care in the world and just living their lives.
Over time, getting to know the Island and meet more people, I began to understand that when Valerie and Ann said to me “You should come to the Vineyard,” what they were saying to me was: come home. That’s what the Vineyard has become.
MVM: What is your perfect Vineyard day?
JC: The perfect day would start with a morning walk from Edgartown to Oak Bluffs that takes you by Jaws Bridge and into Oak Bluffs on Beach Road, a round-trip walk. Then, depending on what time it is, a walk to Behind the Bookstore [in Edgartown] for a little breakfast. We love the house that we’ve been renting for the last few years, so it’s fun to just lay about for a while or go to a beach. And then we would end the day at one of our favorite restaurants, Beach Road [in Vineyard Haven].
MVM: How often do you visit?
JC: This [was] the seventh straight summer. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a long time. But, you know, every year we nose around, see what places are for sale…and there’s no question every year that we will definitely come back.
