Soledad O’Brien I Photo courtesy of UM Communications
News personality and media company CEO Soledad O’Brien will visit the Ford Center Monday evening as part of her “Black in America” tour. The tour is sponsored by Google and will include a panel about race to allow attendees to open up about issues that plague the country.
“We really wanted to go to a campus where students would be engaged and excited about a conversation,” O’Brien said in an exclusive interview with The DM. “The goal is to have a panel conversation that we can open up to the audience so that people who are interested in a conversation can come and be part of that.”
O’Brien talked specifically about race relations at Ole Miss and what she thinks of the race culture in Oxford. The interview occurred before Sunday’s James Meredith statue incident.
“I think what makes Ole Miss interesting is its history,” she said. “People are very aware. What has happened at Ole Miss and in Mississippi is the story of the nation. We are a nation of change at a time when the nation is more diverse than ever, and we’re trying to figure it out.
“These issues clearly exist because they need to be worked through. The answer is certainly not to keep it to yourselves; it’s to talk about them. I hope that’s what we can do during the panel.”
O’Brien has had a long career in journalism, working for multiple major broadcast news outlets. She anchored a CNN documentary series called “Black in America,” the first installment of which aired in 2008. Six years later, she continues the franchise which inspired the “Black in America” tour.
In 2013, Soledad left her exclusive position with CNN to start her own media company, Starfish Media Group.
“I wanted to focus on the things I really wanted to do,” she said. “Mostly documentaries and stories of people that had gone untold. I’m doing stuff that I love to do — the things that really matter to me, personally, and I get to leave behind things that I sometimes had to do as a daily morning anchor that I wasn’t necessarily personally interested in.”
O’Brien is producing documentaries for a number of partners, including HBO, Al Jazeera America, CNN and National Geographic.
While O’Brien does have an impressive career, she said the focus Monday will be about the tour and the dialogue.
“Sometimes people say that race isn’t an issue in America today,” she said. “Someone that would say that is really misunderstanding the state of America today. I hope we are able to have a great discussion with college students and the rest of the community.”
The event will be held Monday at 5:30 p.m. in the Ford Center. The event is free to the public, and attendees do not need tickets. Doors open at 4:30 p.m. for students, faculty and staff of the university and at 5:15 p.m. for the general public. Google will provide free gift bags to all attendees.
