Franklin native Robert Pierre has ridden beside former Vice President Dick Cheney in planes, traveled the world and probably has seen it all. But if you ask the longtime staff writer turned editor for The Washington Post what he loves most about his job, he won’t tell you about giving a voice to politicians and eminent titles.

Pierre has covered national politics, 12 states in the Midwest, local governments in Washington, D.C., suburbs and likely everything in between.

For Pierre, though, reporting and witnessing the crime, incarceration rates and inequalities of the poor, blacks, minorities and others “without a voice in the mainstream media” have shaped his career in journalism — and now his beginnings in the book world.

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Pierre is writing a book with former colleague Jon Jeter about what the election of President Barack Obama means for blacks in America, telling it through the eyes of 10 black families from across the country.

He remembers hearing a phrase often throughout Obama’s campaign, a phrase he said became a sort of cliché until Nov. 4 of last year: “Not in my lifetime.”

He recalls the excitement in the eyes of minorities at the time, particularly his grandmother in Franklin, but also notes the reality behind the election and why the excitement was short-lived.

“What changed on the day he was elected? Everything and nothing,” Pierre said. “When you talk about the disparity in health care and people in jail and age ranges and all the other statistics and factors where black people are on the bottom of that list, that didn’t change the day Obama was elected.”

The first chapter of the book tells the story of Pierre’s grandmother, Daisy Mae, and her life as a black woman in rural Louisiana. Daisy Mae was born in 1929 on a plantation, where she lived until 1976 — many of those years in what used to be called slave quarters.

“That was the case with a lot of folks from our neck of the woods,” Pierre said. “Even after slavery, that was the work that was available to many people.”

The book paints a pragmatic picture of what black Americans have gained, or not gained, from the election of the nation’s first black president, Pierre said. But he is not naive about what many Teche Area residents may say.

Pierre knows the Deep South is not widely known for its progressive ideals, citing a headline from his hometown paper the day after Obama was elected that read “McCain favored by state voters.”

“There’s a lot of folks who won’t be receptive,” he said. “But I didn’t write it for them. If they read it, they’ll be enlightened. But regardless, I have to be true to what I ought to be doing.”

Pierre, 41, got his start in journalism while attending Franklin High School and writing a weekly column about the school for The Franklin Banner-Tribune. He had scholarships to Louisiana State University for engineering, but after the column-writing experience decided he would prefer to study journalism.

He graduated from LSU in journalism with three internships behind him at major metro newspapers: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Washington Bureau), The Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio and The Los Angeles Times.

Pierre nabbed a job at The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune immediately after college, and after leaving the field for a year was offered a two-year internship with The Washington Post in 1993. He has been working for the Washington paper since then, though he left twice to teach at Dillard University in New Orleans and to spend a year in Capetown, South Africa.

He also has contributed a chapter to another book, “Being a Black Man at the Corner of Progress and Peril.”

His mother, Louise Pierre of Baldwin, said he was always “self-motivated,” and she knew from the day he was named valedictorian of his pre-school class that St. Mary Parish would not be his permanent home.

“Franklin always felt smaller than I wanted it to be,” he said. “I never got too attached. I didn’t want to be one of those people who had children young and got stuck.”

Pierre’s trips home, however, have been more frequent over the past few years, as his grandmother has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. His grandmother and her story have had a monumental influence on his life and his upcoming book, Pierre’s mother said.

“When he started coming down more often, he’d rent a van, and they would go on long drives and talk,” Louise Pierre said. “When he started seeing the things she endured ... every time he talked with her it was an adventure.

“He documented her story so it can be passed on,” she said. “If older people don’t talk about it, people won’t ever know their story. She was a great motivator.”

Thinking back on his career, Pierre said he disliked national politics and hearing “talking points” from figureheads, and instead remembers sitting on the couches of mothers whose sons had been victims of murders on the streets.

He recalls one murder in which he went to the mother’s home to talk about her son, and aside from the one person who came to tell the mother about her son’s death, Pierre was the only other visitor who knocked on her door.

“That woman wanted to tell her story,” he said. “Telling stories of people who don’t have access, people who don’t have important titles behind their name, those are the types of stories to be told.”