Melody Barnes served as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Barack Obama, and is the host of the recent podcast "LBJ and the Great Society." Currently, she's a professor at the University of Virginia's Miller Center and co-director of the university's Democracy Initiative.
Melody Barnes served as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Barack Obama, and is the host of the recent podcast "LBJ and the Great Society." Currently, she's a professor at the University of Virginia's Miller Center and co-director of the university's Democracy Initiative.
In this conversation, Barnes reflects on this moment in our nation's history as the promise of systemic reform toward racial equity looms; the striking comparisons between 2020 and 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. and others used the power of protest toward the power of the pen in bringing about transformational change; and the legacies of both Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama.