A Northwestern University journalism student, professor and 2011 graduate are driving 13,500 miles around the United States between Sept. 18 and Dec. 11 for a project titled “Traveling with Twain in Search of America’s Identity.” The three will follow the path that a young Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) took by stagecoach, steamship and train during trips east to New York, south to New Orleans and west to San Francisco during the 1850s and 1860s; they will interview a variety of Americans about race, immigration-status and other current identity issues and talk with members of a representative American family, the Ghigliones, that first immigrated to the United States from northern Italy in the 1870s. Read more >>
Evelio Contreras, a Washington Post videographer, grew up in Eagle Pass, Texas, across the Rio Grande from Piedras Negras, Mexico, “with a divided understanding” of himself. He was a first-generation Mexican American with, he said, a … Read more
Joanna Hernandez, multiplatform editor of The Washington Post, grew up in the projects of New York, then moved to Hell’s Kitchen, once a gritty midtown Manhattan neighborhood of walk-ups that “West Side Story” made famous. Her … Read more
We met Trevor Thomas in a futuristic office on Massachusetts Avenue. Blue neon lights cast a ghastly hue on the employees at Media Matters, a Web-based progressive research and information center. The employees’ eyes were focused … Read more
Before our interview of William A. Davis, Jr., president of Davis Property Ventures, Inc., he kindly invited the three of us to his club, the University Club of Washington, D.C., for breakfast. Upon entering the Taft … Read more
The writings and remarks of Juan Williams, Fox News political analyst and provocateur, have a habit of generating controversy. He titled his recent tribute on The Root to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, after 20 years … Read more
