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The Longest Four Years of My Life: A View from the Field by a Black Fed in the Trump Administration, Offers an Unprecedented Inside Account of One of America’s Most Turbulent Presidencies
Deric A. Gilliard, a 25-year veteran of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), award-winning journalist, and former communications director for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), has released his highly anticipated political memoir, The Longest Four Years of My Life: A View from the Field by a Black Fed in the Trump Administration. The book provides a compelling, ground-level account of the Trump presidency as witnessed by a Black Christian federal employee navigating race, justice, and faith, at the intersection of policy and power.
Serving as the public affairs advisor to HHS regional directors across eight southeastern states Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, Gilliard witnessed firsthand how Trump administration policies disproportionately impacted Black, brown, and low-income communities in the South. His book chronicles the administration’s systematic efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the racial and ethnic animosity that defined the era.
“The Trump Administration was undoubtedly the most divisive, disruptive administration of my adult lifetime,” said Gilliard, who also advised appointees in the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden Administrations. “Our team carried out our responsibilities while frequently navigating policies that actively undermined the communities we served.”
The memoir also details Gilliard’s all-black staff’s struggle to remain hopeful as Trump repeatedly mischaracterized the Black Lives Matter movement and the justice marches that erupted in 2020 following the killings of unarmed Black men. Additionally, Gilliard examines the administration’s role in separating immigrant children from their families at the border. His team was tasked with vetting and staffing Unaccompanied Children Centers (UACs), and agonized over the long-term damage inflicted on the nation’s safety nets and democratic institutions. He also forecasts the implementation of Project 2025 and its devastating consequences for America’s most vulnerable populations.
About the Author
Deric A. Gilliard retired in 2022 after 25 years of federal service, having worked under political appointees across five administrations: Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. Equipped with a University of Kansas B.A. in journalism graduate and an M.A. in African American Studies from Georgia State University, Gilliard has written for USA Today, Time, and the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, and served as an editor at the Atlanta Daily World. He was the first keynote speaker at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, and served as the principal non-Muslim promoter of the Million Man March. He also facilitates annual racial righteousness and justice immersion initiatives and served as an outreach and engagement and historian consultant for the creation of phase one of the DOI/NPS national monument to the 1961 Freedom Riders in Calhoun, AL.
His first book, Living in the Shadows of a Legend: Unsung Heroes and ‘Sheroes’ who Marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., profiles 20 lesser-known contributors to Dr. King’s movement. As a historian and lecturer, Gilliard examines the throughline between the hard-fought gains of King’s nonviolent civil rights movement to today’s regressive environment where voting rights, democracy and black history are being clawed back and attacked. Gilliard is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., the SCLC and NAACP, and the National Association of Black Journalists.
The Longest Four Years of My Life is available at www.DericGilliard.com and across multiple online platforms.
June 2026
MEDIA CONTACT:
Name: Deric Gilliard
Email: gilliardpr77@gmail.com
Phone no: (770) 685-8501
Website: www.DericGilliard.com