Eugene Robinson’s ‘Personal History of America’

In another full house for this summer’s M.V. Author Series, several hundred people assembled on Sunday evening at the Chilmark Community Center to hear Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eugene Robinson in conversation with Henry Louis Gates Jr. about Robinson’s new book, “Freedom Lost, Freedom Won: A Personal History of America.” The book is a chronicle of the U.S. as seen through the lens of his own family’s heritage. And Harvard Professor Gates, creator and host of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” proved to be the ideal interlocutor in examining what he described as a “double helix” of memoir and history.

Originally from Orangeburg, S.C., Robinson had the good fortune of encountering a treasure trove of documents — letters, speeches, books, contracts, financial records, and more — in the home that had been in his family for multiple generations, and which still stands. The oral history passed on by his elders also made for valuable contributions, though he expressed some regret at not being able to gather more in that regard. Expanding his search to local libraries and other nearby institutions, he diligently traced his own roots, beginning with the sale — twice — of his great-great-grandfather, Henry (“Harry”) Fordham, in the early 19th century. The process delivered an array of what Robinson called “eureka moments,” the first of which was the discovery that the same ancestor had, in 1851, been sold a third time — to himself.

Sunday evening’s discussion began with Robinson’s firsthand experience of a more recent event: The 1968 Orangeburg Massacre, which he watched from his family’s home, built by Henry’s formidable son, Maj. John Hammond Fordham, in 1903. That event, centered around a still-segregated bowling alley, was surely traumatic for young Eugene, but an account he penned while a student at the University of Michigan won an award, and thus served as the launch of his career in journalism.

While subsequently enjoying success after success as a reporter, editor, columnist, and international bureau chief, Robinson maintained a keen awareness of, and curiosity about, the material in his childhood home and the history it represented. Together with Gates, he traced the trajectory of Black people in this country from slavery to the Civil War and Emancipation, to Reconstruction and Southern Redemption, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and both World Wars. With all that they had endured, said Robinson, “by nature, just remaining in or returning to the South during these times, they were civil rights fighters,” his ancestors among them.

Asked by Gates what his ancestors might have thought had they read the book, then seen how the country has ended up today, Robinson said they would probably be most distressed about the income inequality and, as a consequence, the diminished expectations for and among African Americans. That was simply not how he and his sister had been raised, and there were plenty of documents to show this intriguing point. 

Still, the conversation, while lively, informative, and thought-provoking (as noted in the questions from the audience about the country’s past, present, and future) only scratched at the surface of Robinson’s exhaustive, yet inspiring, research and truly gifted storytelling in “Freedom Lost, Freedom Won.”