So, it's the 250th birthday of America

and Donald Trump is president. And I

think the celebration you're going to

get from the Trump administration is

going to be of a very specific kind.

>> Get ready, America, because we're

putting our love of country on full

display.

>> A celebration of American glory,

American greatness.

>> Welcome to UFC Freedom 250. That's a

huge right hand is covering up big

>> uncritical I think will be underelling

it.

There has been I think a a a split a

severing of two visions of American

history.

There's a vision that can only see glory

and a vision that I think can only see

suffering and sin.

One of my beliefs about politics is that

until we can reintegrate

a story, until we have leaders again

able to tell a more holistic story of

the country, it's able to hold its

triumphs and its tragedies together,

it's going to be very, very hard to move

forward.

I'm in Montgomery, Alabama. I think of

Montgomery in some ways as the

birthplace of American democracy. Not

where it was conceived, right? That's

the founding. But where the actual thing

promised at [music] the founding began

to really be born.

>> THE PEOPLE OF MONTGOMERY WALKED to

maintain their human dignity and their

rights.

>> This is where the Montgomery bus boycott

began.

>> LET US ALL WALK TOGETHER FOR FREEDOM,

FOR LIBERTY, AND EQUALITY.

>> Which led to the civil rights movement.

I have a dream that one day

>> this nation will rise up and live out

the true meaning of its creed.

>> Which led to the triumphs and the laws

that for the first time made America

some version of the democracy [music]

and the country that it initially

promised to be.

>> We hold these truths to be self-evident

that all men [singing] are created

[music] equal.

There's a series of really remarkable

museums and sites here, the Legacy

Museum, the Freedom Monument Sculpture

Park that have been created by the Equal

Justice Initiative as ways of of

apprehending that history, [music]

holding

horror and beauty, tragedy and triumph,

inhumity and humanity [music] together.

I think sometimes of wisdom as the

ability to hold the totality of life.

The wiser you are, the more of life you

can hold. And I think this holds quite a

bit in it. Brian Stevenson is the

founder of the Equal Justice Initiative.

He has done amazing work over the years,

continues to do amazing work defending

people on death row. He is the author of

the book Just Mercy, which was turned

into a movie where he was played by

Michael B. Jordan. How many of us can

say that?

>> That's not justice. That's not right.

But over time, you began to expand that

work into questions of remembrance,

questions of our history and how we

think about it and and whose humanity we

are able to see inside of it. Talking to

Stevenson, I was interested in how do

you create a history of this country

that loves it in its totality? How do

you work with America's past and its

present in a way that doesn't [music]

trap you in pain, but doesn't force you

to inhabit only an imagined glory? How

do you have a story that pushes a

country forward that enhances rather

than reduces the bonds of brotherhood

and solidarity between the people within

it? As always, my email escline shown

times.com.

[music]

>> [music]

>> Ryan Stevenson, welcome to the show.

>> Thank you. So, we're speaking here not

long before the 250th anniversary of

America.

What's your relationship to that day?

>> You know, I think anniversaries are

always a time for reflection, uh, to

think about who we are, where we've

been, but for me, more importantly,

where are we going? You know, I I think

about this moment in terms of what will

be people be talking about on our 300th

anniversary,

>> the cage match. [laughter]

>> I hope that we will be past spectacle

violence as a way to commemorate our

nation. I don't think that violence,

which is a part of every nation's

history, but it's not the best part.

It's not the glorious part. It's not the

battles won. It's the ideas that

motivated people to stand up for things

that they believe in that I think are

most important. So I see this as a

moment for reflection to acknowledge

things that are extraordinary and

wonderful, but to also acknowledge

things that are difficult and painful

that continue to harm and haunt us.

We're sitting here in a museum. We are

are sitting in a place built to

commemorate,

to take seriously, to stare

unflinchingly at

some of the most brutal,

violent, horrible moments in American

history. And not just the moments, but

the people that this violence was

inflicted upon.

>> And we're going to talk about different

pieces of the museum that moved me and

and what they mean. But one question I

have is is for you spending so much time

in those eras, thinking so much about

how to represent them, thinking so much

about how to make people feel something

they may not want to feel.

>> What that has done to your relationship

with maybe America itself or the idea of

America, the story of America. I moved

to Montgomery in the 1980s. We had 59

markers and monuments to the

Confederacy.

Uh the three largest high schools here

were Robert E. Lehi, Jefferson Davis

High, Sydney Laneir High, where the

population had to walk around in a space

that shouted the history of the

Confederacy and would not even whisper

the history of slavery. You could not

find the word slave, slavery, or

enslavement anywhere in the city

landscape. And I think that does

something unhealthy for everybody. And

so I I just saw it as a way of creating

a space for us to understand our history

more honestly, more completely. I think

it is a narrative journey

that you have to undertake and there

will be pain along the way but it's a

very familiar way of helping the world

reckon with uh human rights violations.

I mean we have nearly 200 Holocaust

museums across the world. We have over

40 in the United States. I think we need

all of them. When you go to the

Holocaust Museum, at least when I do, I

get to the end of it and I am motivated

to say never again. Not Jewish, not

connected to that history, but I am

motivated by the suffering and the

brutality that I have learned about to

say never again.

And for me, this country has never

created a relationship to our history of

racial violence, of enslavement, of uh

lynching, of abuse of other people who

are disfavored. We've never created a

relationship to that history that has

motivated us to say never again. And

because we've never made that commitment

of never again, we keep

being romanced by new manifestations

that pull us into the very patterns and

behaviors that allow that kind of

violence to be replicated. There's also

conflict in bringing up this history.

Donald Trump is president and there has

been an ongoing

fury from him, from his White House and

people around him going back to his

first term about around their sense that

the people like you trying to create a

relationship to our racial history,

trying to create a reckoning with it are

trying to take the story of America and

poison it

>> by viewing every issue through the lens

of race. They want to impose a new

segregation

and we must not allow that to happen.

critical race theory,

the 1619 project, and the crusade

against American history is toxic

propaganda,

ideological poison that if not removed

will dissolve the civic bonds that tie

us together,

will destroy our country.

>> In answer to the New York Times 1619

project, they create the 1776 project.

One of both the sources of their

political strength and the the engines

of their political argument is that

there is an organized faction trying to

corrupt the story of America, trying to

force us into a space of endless

repentance

and acidify the bonds of solidarity

between us and that we are a nation.

Nations need stories everybody believes

in and that one thing that they are

offering the country is an ability to be

proud of America.

>> Yeah. again. What do you think of that?

>> I I think there's so many areas of our

lives, particularly in this country,

that are inspiring and energizing and

create joy and create meaning and

purpose. There are lots of opportunities

to feel proud and excited about what we

have done. I mean, we cheer for our

Olympic teams. We cheer for achievement.

We cheer for success. the technology

that has changed the world is something

that we all embrace and celebrate. Uh

communication,

but that doesn't mean that's the only

thing you should think about. It's the

only thing you should talk about. And I

just think public health, human health

is a really great way to think about

this. It's like saying we don't want

physicians to tell people that they have

high blood pressure or diabetes because

that's depressing. That's demoralizing.

that's going to make people feel bad

when they walk out. And we could ban

physicians from ever giving that

diagnosis. But the people who have high

blood pressure, the people who have

diabetes are going to get sick. They're

not going to be healthy and eventually

it will kill them in ways that they

don't have to die. You know, our

military leaders, if you talk to

military leaders in military colleges,

all of thesemies,

what they study are the mistakes we have

made during our past. It's the

misjudgments during war. It's the

miscalculations that created outcomes

that we didn't want. That's what you

study so that you don't replicate those

mistakes in the future. You do the same

thing in science. You do the same thing

in business. That's how we have

succeeded. That's how we have achieved

in this country. I don't share the view

that we are doomed. I don't share the

view that we are corrupted uh without

any opportunity for repair. I genuinely

believe that there is something that

feels more like freedom, more like

equality, more like liberty and more

like justice waiting for us in the

United States. I think it's just

waiting. But we will not get there if we

don't find the courage to unbburden

ourselves from the parts of our history

that hold us back. And I genuinely

believe that. And I I see lots of

examples of it all the time. You know,

we're here in Alabama. In Alabama,

college football is like religion. It

really is. If you moved here, people

would start asking you almost

immediately, Auburn or Alabama? There

was this intensity around college

football that I didn't quite understand.

And I first well I thought oh they don't

have a professional sports team that's

what it is. No it's more than that.

There's an identity that has evolved in

this state that is connected to the

success of these athletic programs. And

the question becomes why? And when you

think about it here in Alabama it's one

of the things that we can be

legitimately proud of that we have won

national championships against

everybody. The Californians, the New

Yorkers, the Midwest. We beat them on

these playing fields and it generates

pride. [sighs and gasps]

And I just want to step back a few

decades and remind people that George

Wallace stood in front of the University

of Alabama schoolhouse door and said,

"Segregation forever. Black people will

never walk through these gates." And

most of the people in the state

supported him. But then courageous black

athletes and courageous white parents

sent their kids to that school as

integration took place. And then we got

excited about the possibility of

winning. And our desire to win overcame

our desire to be segregated and we

started winning. And now you see this

pride, you see this joy, you see this

triumph for this state. And on those

game days, black people, white people,

poor people, rich people are all glued

to the TV. They're all at the stadium.

They're all celebrating. It's like

what's happening with the Knicks in New

York City right now. That triumph is a

state triumph. It's an everybody

triumph. [sighs and gasps]

And the only thing I want to acknowledge

is that you owe that to the civil rights

movement. You owe that to the courageous

people who said, "No, we reject

segregation forever." And if we

understand that, then we begin to

imagine, well, what where else might we

have achievement and progress and win

things if we got past that bigotry, if

we got past that fear? I always feel

that you could make a real argument that

Montgomery is a birthplace of American

democracy, not where it was conceived,

right? There's a conception of American

democracy that happens in arguably 1776,

you know, or maybe before that,

depending on how you want to think about

it. But America is not a democracy

>> until at least after the Civil Rights

and the Voting Rights Acts on on any

real measure.

>> Yeah.

>> Um that we would recognize today.

>> Yeah.

>> And what turns that begins here with the

bus boycott.

>> And this place is not just a monument to

segregation or Jim Crow. The civil

rights movement I I really do think to

be the most

beautiful moment and movement

>> in American history. of course braided

in with some of the absolute

ugliest and most horrifying moments in

American history, but somehow taking

that in its totality, not choosing one

or the other, not seeing so much of the

ugliness

>> that the heroism disappears that you

cease to see that as America too or vice

versa. That feels like a mature

relationship

to our history. like wisdom is holding

both things as part of the American

synthesis.

>> I even think it it it actually starts

earlier than that. When when I um think

about the legacy of slavery, one of the

things that I've just been focused on a

lot since we started working on our

sites is how extraordinary it was that

when those 4 million

black people were emancipated after the

Civil War,

they decided not to seek revenge and

retribution against the people who

enslaved them. They knew who sold their

children. They knew who abused them.

They knew who raped them. They knew who

did all of these horrific things. And

they could have given into the emotion,

the desire to seek retribution and

revenge against the enslavers, the

people who did these torturous things.

But instead, when you look at what

happens after the Civil War, you see

this community of people choose America.

They say, "You know what? We're going to

build schools. We're going to build

churches. We're going to build families.

We're going to commit to this country

like nobody's ever committed before.

Black men registered to vote. They ran

for office. They tried to create harmony

and peace with those who had enslaved

and tortured them. It was a remarkable

commitment to a healthier, better

future. It collapsed quickly and that's

what gives rise to a century of

segregation and Jim Crow laws. Black

people were killed by the police on

buses. It wasn't just one day. It was a

whole history of abuse. you know, black

people had to get on the front of the

bus, pay their fair, get off the bus, go

to the back door, and sometimes the bus

would just drive away before a black

person could get on the bus. So many

black riders in Montgomery would be left

humiliated on the street, and that was

the reality. But to understand what

happens in 1955, I think we need to have

some appreciation for what happened in

1865. Because when they made that first

commitment to build America and were

brutally and violently rejected, you

could also understand why people might

say, "We're never going to do that

again." But that's exactly what happens

in 1955

when people finally said, "We're going

to challenge this."

They were believing in an America that

would respect them, that would respond

to their challenge, to stay off the

buses. Every black person in this

community, 50,000 people, it's

remarkable. And they succeed. And that

success then gives birth to the civil

rights movement and inspired people,

black and white, to commit to swims

where they might be poisoned or

threatened with acid. to commit to

readins where they might get beaten and

pulled out of libraries, to commit to

freedom rides where writers were bloody

brutalized, and to commit to all of that

activism and struggle that then yielded

this incredible moment in 1965 where

democracy in this country took shape in

a way that had never existed before. And

I think you're right, that decade,

that's that's why we have it at our

Montgomery Square, this language, the

decade that changed the world. One thing

that the museums and the sculpture sites

and the monuments here that that you

have

put together, one thing they do really

beautifully is what you did there, which

is show this is an integrated history.

There's no one moment. There's no

eras disconnected from each other. And

so it begins even before slavery in this

country begins at the beginning of a

slave trade. When you walk in the

museum,

>> you're greeted with waves.

>> And I I spend a lot of time with data

visualizations in my day.

>> Yeah.

>> I'm not usually very moved by them.

>> Yeah.

>> But you have one that is visualizing the

flow of ships of slave ships and where

they went, right, which is not initially

primarily to America. That's right. The

slave trade was much more global than

that. But you begin to see as you take

into the 1700s, the 1800s, it

concentrate in America towards cotton,

towards the south, towards those riches.

>> And this is, I think, the first thing

that began to really settle in to my

soul from being at the museum. It made

me think about the people on the ships

in two ways. Mhm.

>> One is, and you have incredibly moving

installations around this, the people

ripped from their homes and their

families, pregnant women, children,

and 2 million die in the crossing, which

is a huge number of people.

>> So many throw themselves overboard.

It's gutting. It's like a truly gutting

>> thing to sit with. I also spent time

thinking about the enslavers. Mhm. And

one thing that was really present for me

throughout the work you all have done

here is a power of stories

and what it must have taken. What

stories it must have taken to not see

the humanity of the people before you.

Not see that when they were weeping

those tears mattered. Not see that the

families you were destroying and

dissolving loved each other and mattered

exactly as much as your own. not see

that you that they were humans and that

you had become

>> Yeah.

>> the monster,

>> right? To do all this with a Bible in

your hand.

>> Yeah.

>> I'm curious, having sat in so much of

this, how you understand what those

stories were.

>> Yeah.

>> That led people to sacrifice their

humanity and to so betray the humanity

of the people they were enslaving. I I

think that's such an important question

and the transatlantic trade in that

water in the Atlantic Ocean um just as

backdrop, you know, that exhibit really

came out of my first trip to Africa and

and I I mention this because I think

it's true for all of us. It's just we're

all learning, evolving. So, I grew up on

the ocean. The Atlantic Ocean was the

beach. It was a place to go. And then I

went to Africa for the first time.

um misconnect. I was supposed to give a

speech in Abuja in Nigeria and I got

there too late and so they sent somebody

uh to meet me at the airport in Lagos

who was supposed to take care of me and

this young lawyer met me at the airport

and he was very nice and first thing he

said was I've canceled your hotel room.

You're not going to stay in a hotel.

You're going to stay with me and my

family and my son is excited to meet you

and he's going to share. And so he was

very he was committed to giving me an

authentic experience and he said I had

to show you Legos. It was like 11:00 at

night and he took me all around the city

and we would literally go into

neighborhoods and he would start

shouting, "Hey everybody, come out and

meet this black American lawyer and

people would come out and these women

were trying to sell me shea butter and

all these products and it was rich. Uh I

was tired, but it was rich." And he took

me all around the city. I finally said,

"Man, I got to get a little rest. Can we

can we just go home and get a little I

got to get up early." He said, "Okay,

one more place." And uh he took me to

the beach. I didn't even think about the

beach in Lagos. It was not pretty. It

was dark. It was kind of concrete slabs.

There were soldiers with guns and uh

fast food play. Nothing beautiful about

it. He said, "Come on, come on." And we

climbed over the concrete slabs down to

the shore of the beach. It was dark. You

could see the moon shining across the

ocean. And this guy had been so

gregarious and so talkative, all of a

sudden got so quiet. And I was standing

there and I looked over at him and he

was crying. He had a tear running down

his face. And then he looked at me and

he said, "I brought you here because I

wanted to tell you I'm sorry. This is

where we lost you."

>> And for the first time in my life, I

realized I was standing on the other

side of this ocean that separated me

from everything that's important about

me. My identity, my culture, my history

was all taken from me by the Atlantic

Ocean. If I take a DNA test, I show up

in 24 different countries.

And it it hit me hard. First time. And

it changed my relationship to the

Atlantic Ocean. When I got back here, I

realized that that body of water needed

to be understood more honestly. We've

spent millions of dollars looking for

trinkets from the Titanic in the

Atlantic and we haven't spent hardly

anything to reckon with the two million

bodies that are buried in the bottom of

that ocean. And so a story can help us

understand things about who we are, our

relationship to the things around us

that are important. I still love the

beach. I still see it as a place of

beauty. But I also see this need to help

others understand the harm that was

caused by moving millions of people off

of their land, their place, their space,

it's really unprecedented in human

history. And so the second part of your

question gets to the how, why? And when

I look at the history of enslavement and

you try to understand how did that come

because you're right, people who

enslaved other people thought of

themselves as moral and decent and

Christian and and you have to ask, well,

how do you think of yourself as moral

and decent and Christian when you're

pulling away a screaming woman from her

children knowing that that mother will

never see those children again because

you're treating her as property? How do

you do that?

>> And you beat her for crying. beat her.

You have so many exhibits on this.

>> Absolutely. And you abuse and and I

think you have to understand that that

takes a false narrative. In order for

those people to feel moral and decent

and Christian, there had to be a false

narrative legitimating, sustaining,

animating what they were seeing. And so

we created a false narrative in this

country. It actually began when

Europeans arrived and we had to deal

with indigenous peoples, which is part

of the reason why I think we need to

talk more about that history. When we

created our constitution, when we

declared independence and advanced these

ideas of equality and freedom and

justice, we denied native people

protection. We said, "Oh, no, those

native people, they're different." And

we created this narrative of racial

difference that we used to justify

forcing people off their lands, the

famine, the war, the disease. And that

narrative of racial difference, the same

narrative is what was used to justify

246 years of slavery. And the false

narrative was that black people are not

as good as white people. That black

people are less human, less evolved,

less capable. And that's why I believe

the great evil of slavery wasn't the

bondage, the forced labor, the violence,

all of those things. I think the true

evil of American slavery was the

narrative we created to justify

enslavement.

And when I give talks, I often argue

that the North won the Civil War, but

the South won the narrative war. Those

ideas of racial difference and racial

hierarchy, they they continued. And then

important footnote on that. Even many of

the abolitionists in the north, even

many of the people who did not believe

in slavery also did not believe in

racial equality, which is why

reconstruction collapses, they retreated

from that because they were being

governed by this narrative of racial

differences. So then when southern

states start codifying racial

segregation and creating Jim Crow, it

didn't seem as strange as you as you

would imagine it should be to have laws

barring black people and white people

from sitting in the same part of a bus

or playing checkers together or living

next to one another. This absurd crazy

world where black kids couldn't play

with white kids and black people

couldn't say this to a white person.

that is all rooted in this narrative and

and we talk about mass incarceration in

the same context because I think there's

a way in which we have tolerated

throwing away hundreds of thousands of

people

because it's politically expedient. You

know the drug war in the 1970s uh you

know we had 300,000 people in our jails

and prisons until the 1970s and by the

end of the century we had over 2

million. How did that happen? Well, we

had people from both political parties

saying that people who are drug

addicted, people who are drug dependent

are criminals who should be punished for

their addiction and dependency. Even the

people when I'm representing my Clinton,

people are trying to kill the people I

represent. It's heartbreaking to me. I'm

working on a case now involving a

10-year-old child. And there are people

in this state that refuse to put this

child in the juvenile system. They're

trying to keep him in the adult system.

10-year-old boy. And because there's no

place for 10-year-old children in the

adult system, what they do with a

10-year-old boy is put him in solitary

confinement.

>> And that is such a destructive, cruel,

abusive thing to do. And if I could just

get them close enough to this child, I

don't think anybody would say that's

what we should be doing. But they won't

get close.

>> But some of them are close to this

child. There was a judge who sentenced

that child. No.

>> Well, but judges don't have to get close

to the people they sentence. I mean, I

think one of the things if I could

radically change our criminal legal

system, I would make judges go to jails

and prisons and see what's happening to

people in jails and prisons, I would

actually make them spend time in

low-income communities, the zip codes

where you have the highest rates of

arrest and pro. I would I would want

them to go and actually see the lives of

children, see what's happening to kids

who are born into violent families where

people are always shouting that are

living near gunshots all the time to see

the environments so they could have an

appreciation for who that person is. But

that's the problem now is that we have

so many people with the power police,

prosecutors, and judges who are

disconnected. And if the only thing you

see is people at their worst, then that

can mis mislead you as well, right? And

and that's what happens to a lot of law

enforcement. You only see people on

their worst day and that makes you angry

and and I get it. But if you actually

spent time with their mothers, their

siblings, the people trying to help

them. If you spent time in poor

communities and you actually saw the

struggle people are engaged in to

overcome, then I think you'd actually

have a different mindset. But no, I

think this child is a consequence of the

way in which we've divided things.

Almost all the kids under the age of 13

in this state who've been condemned in

this way are kids of color and the

judges are almost all white.

>> I I wish in the lynching room one of the

things and I found that of [snorts]

everything I sat in here to be the

hardest

>> Yeah.

>> uh space to sit in.

>> Yeah.

>> But two things really sat with me. One

was

>> cuz you you have put up all this

coverage of lynchings, right? newspapers

and announcements and invitations,

right, to to come out to see the

lynching.

>> Yeah.

>> Of kids, of 13-year-olds, of

15year-olds. There's one in which an

infant

>> That's right.

>> is lynched.

>> Yeah.

>> And that's talked about, right? Just as

a fact like come, you know, this is what

happened. This is what we did. And then

the other was this other dimension of

the news reports that you put up on it.

the thirst for

violence and and and the the like there

were multiple where they couldn't find

the person so they lynched the brother.

>> Yes.

>> Yes.

>> And that was again reported on

advertised.

>> He talked too much. Now he won't

>> talk anymore was the way another one was

described.

>> You know we were just talking about

maybe this difference between

>> being close to someone and being near

them is maybe a different way of saying

what I was saying. There was a judge at

some point near that child. there's a

prosecutor near that child in a room

with that child. And in these

communities, there is maybe not

closeness in the way you're describing

it, an intimacy, a seeing of another

person's struggle, humanity, dignity,

soul, but there's nearness. And in some

ways, the nearness, it seems that you

can feel a pulsing fear behind it,

right? particularly if there's ever uh

evidence of revolt

>> of violence of people trying to fight

back in a system that is destroying them

and then the system has to come down

with extraordinary

force on them or anybody near them

escape.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. The punishment for escape when

that would be in some ways the most

honorable and human

>> response to what is being done. the

number of people who are brutalized or

at times I think lynched but certainly

brutalized during slavery for just going

at night to try to see their wife who

has been moved.

>> Yeah.

>> Or their mother. There's something about

this nearness but not

>> Yeah.

>> closess. I I I I think that's right. I

mean, the people who were most at risk

of lynching violence in the 20th century

were black veterans after World War I

and black veterans after World War II.

Why? because they had gone to Europe and

fought. They've been given a gun. They

had done something that people applauded

them for. France celebrated them. And

now they're back in Mississippi. Now

they're back in Georgia. And for the

local power structure, that was a

threat. And so they would try to

humiliate them. Boy, take that uniform

off right now. And they would say no.

And their resistance was such a threat

to this social order, this racial order

that they would be particularly at risk

of victimization.

And so I I think you can look at that in

terms of proximity and I think that is a

very real framework.

But it's also worth kind of stepping out

from that. How did that happen? Well,

that's where I think this narrative

becomes so important. And part of what

I'm saying is yes,

uh it is not good for you to enslave

another human being. I I don't want you

to do that um because I care about you.

I think it will corrupt your heart, your

soul. It will limit your capacity to

love. It is not healthy to say to

people, you can't love that person

because of their color. It is not good

for you to take your children to a

lynching, which many families did, and

let them watch a black man being

brutalized and mutilated. It's not good

for them. You're going to create an

unhealthy relationship to life. And

that's why I do see this as an effort to

liberate everybody, to uplift everybody,

not just the people who have kind of

disproportionately borne the burden of

this bigotry, but everybody.

>> There's a picture right next to us of a

bunch of white families staring at the

feet of a lynched man and that some of

the children are in ties.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. They they dress them up for the

occasion.

>> Yeah.

>> I was thinking as you said some of that

about the word narrative. narrative

somehow seems so

thin for what it was, right? There's a

narrative in a book, there's a narrative

in a Pixar film

>> that this wasn't just a story people

were telling. It was a way that they

were and were not able

to

register plain facts of the world in

front of them. Which isn't to say it's

not a narrative or not a story, but it

it made me think about what has to

happen for a story to penetrate so

deeply that it is more powerful than

your immediate reality is to you. I

always think of Big Hart vivisecting

animals and as they scream, right? And

animals do scream if you cut them open

while they're alive,

>> saying they're not really feeling pain.

>> Those are just mechanical sounds.

>> And one of the parts of the museum that

I really spent a lot of time in were the

ads to sell slaves. And the reason I

found myself

just reading more and more and more of

them is that there are moment when you

saw something a dissonance breaking

through. Right? We talk about narrative,

but there's also the power of

self-interest

>> and of interest. And as you read these

and there's a a wall of them in the

museum, the slaves are the people are

described as able to learn anything,

completely trustworthy of a great

family, right? They they read almost

like college endorsement letters

because they're trying to get the

highest price for them. Yeah.

>> And so on the one hand there's this

narrative, this story of brutishness, of

subhumanity, of incapacity, and then

it's Peter is a master brick layer and

and you see something happening that

what is known but can't be admitted.

>> Yeah. Well, I I I think you're

absolutely right that the reality of

being with another human being, seeing

another person's humanity is always

going to emerge in ways that are

powerful. You know, I grew up in

segregation. There were no but for Brown

versus Board of Education. I would have

had a life where there was no engagement

with people who are white. But because

of that decision, lawyers came into our

community, made them open up the public

schools, and I began interacting with

white kids, and they began interacting

with me. And by the end of

[clears throat] high school, gosh, they

elected me to be the president of the

student body, which would have been

inconceivable, not because I was

particularly special, but just because

we were able to get to a place of

relationship.

And I I say that because when you think

about the harm done by segregation, we

never focus on what it did to our

understanding of who we are. I mean, I

think about the lives of most Americans

in the 20th century. There were very few

places where people had integrated,

racially integrated lives. And now

what's happened is we're seeing that

replicated again. Our public schools in

Montgomery are racially segregated. The

public schools are 76%

black. White parents didn't want their

kids going to school with black kids

after Brown. And so they left and

started creating private schools and

charter schools and and that separation

has continued. And that's the tragedy of

the narrative that keeps us apart. I I

mean when you really get to know a

person I mean again I see this in my

legal work and a lot of what I'm trying

to do in this space has been informed by

that. I've had correctional officers

come up to me with tears in their eyes

uh when one of my clients is getting

close to an execution date and say,

"Please, please save this man. He's a

good person. He doesn't deserve this."

They wouldn't be able to testify to that

in court. If I asked them for an

affidavit, they wouldn't be able to do

that because they would lose their job.

But it was a genuine understanding. This

this is a human being whose life has

meaning and purpose and value. He's not

someone who's beyond hope, beyond

redemption. And it wasn't even about

innocence or guilt. It was about what

they observed.

So I I do think that dissonance what you

see in those ads is a dissonance that

that was uh intentional

uh that was uh sustained obviously by

the economic benefit of saying something

positive about this person that you're

trying to sell. But you can see it

throughout history. This brings us in

way to the 250th to 1776.

You can see it in the founding fathers

who many of them knew and left eloquent

writings to the effect of slavery is a

moral horror.

>> Yeah.

>> That God will judge this country for.

And not only did they not abolish

slavery upon the founding of the

country, but they did not free their own

slaves. And that's where I think there's

something interesting in this question

of in some ways it almost takes us off

the hook then and now to say that the

problem was

everyone believed a story that wasn't

true because many people knew the story

wasn't true or they believed multiple

stories at one time.

But it's sometimes hard, costly to act

upon what you know is true. I mean, you

don't have to take away from the

brilliance of the founders or the

morality in other dimensions

>> or what they gifted unto the world to

say that actually it's a profound

warning to read their writings on this

>> and then recognize what they did not do.

>> Absolutely. And that's why exploring

what they did not do is as important as

exploring what they did, understanding

what they did. And to not reckon with

what they did not do, it's not just

dishonest, it's misleading. It will

allow you to believe that greatness

uh can be achieved without completeness,

without

>> something that's consistent. And I just

think again it ends up being unhealthy.

I think about people I know super

talented, incredibly talented, and I

could talk forever about how unique and

skilled and talented they are as a

musician, as an athlete, but I also know

that they are suffering, that they are

struggling, that they're dealing with

mental health challenges, emotional

challenges, depression.

And if I don't talk about that, if they

don't talk about that, their talents

will not define them, they'll be

overwhelmed by these other things. And

so that's why I feel like it's unhealthy

to not acknowledge the tensions, the

contradictions, the failures of the

founding fathers and the failures of our

largest society.

>> Let me have you expand on that because I

think that's a very profound statement

that and and I want to remember how you

said it that greatness is not possible

without completeness. Is that what you

said?

>> Yeah. I think many people have the fear

that what you will have if you confront

if you admit if you look straight at

your failings your country's failings is

not completeness so much as a kind of

overwhelm that you will be overwhelmed

by the darkness.

>> Yeah. I I

>> tell me why you don't believe that.

Well, I just I I don't I think we have

too many examples of that not happening

to fear that it that it will happen to

us. I mean, you know, a lot of what I'm

doing here came out of going to South

Africa and visiting the apartheid

museum. And to get into that museum, you

get a ticket and the ticket will

arbitrarily assign you a label that says

white or colored. and you have to go

through the door that your ticket

corresponds with. So before you even go

into that museum, you have to deal with

the discomfort of participating

with apartheid and I went with three or

four Swedish lawyers. We're all at some

human rights conference. We all bought

tickets. We all got tickets that said

white. And when they realized that and

they saw the doors, they immediately

stopped and said, "Oh no." And they went

back to the black woman working at the

counter and said, "Yeah, we don't want

the white ticket. we want the other

ticket and she wouldn't sell it to him.

But that sense of discomfort before you

even go in and when you go to the

>> What did it feel like for you?

>> Well, I walked right through the white

door. It didn't bother me. I mean, you

know, because I understood what they

were trying to do. Uh they were trying

to get you to imagine to appreciate to

to kind of engage with the arbitrariness

of that regime. But there were rooms in

that museum where there were nooes

hanging from the wall. I was like, "Oh

my god." And when I left, I thought, "We

don't have any museums like this in

America." Then I went to Berlin.

And in Berlin, I was blown away. You

can't go 200 meters in Berlin without

seeing the Staplestein and the markers

and the monuments dedicated to the

victims of the Holocaust. The Holocaust

Memorial sits in the center of Berlin.

There's like a dozen museums dealing

with the horrors of the Holocaust. Just

in Berlin, there were no Adolf Hitler

statues. There were no monuments to the

perpetrators of the Holocaust. In

Germany, you're required to understand

the Holocaust before you graduate from

high school. You can't graduate without

a detailed understanding of that

history. And they don't have people

saying, "Oh, we can't teach our kids

about the Holocaust. That might make

them feel uncomfortable or ashamed."

It's the opposite.

>> Well, now they do have some people

saying that. And I think this is

important because when we I remember our

earlier conversations and you tell me

about Berlin

>> and in the decade or so that has passed

since then, you know, maybe a bit less,

we've seen the rise of the AFD. And at

the the nuclear core of the AFD, I mean,

they have an argument about immigration

and many other things, but much of their

appeal is about restoring German pride,

allowing Germans to be proud of who they

are.

There is no vaccine against bigotry and

politics of fear and anger. Nothing will

insulate us from tensions. And you see

that in Germany, you see that in Europe.

But when you think about Germany, the

villain of the 20th century and where it

stands today in the 21st century. In

less than 80 years, that nation has

transformed itself. And it wasn't

immediate. If you talked about the

Holocaust, you'd get booed. you'd get

you'd get shouted at. But what has

happened there in the last 80 years I

think is quite remarkable and we need to

understand that before we say oh we

can't talk about that in the United

States because we'll get defined by that

we'll be overwhelmed by that. The

principal difference of course is that

in South Africa there was a change in

power. A black majority took over and

they were insisting on reckoning with

the history of of apartheid. The Nazis

lost the war. Had the Nazis won the war,

we wouldn't see the Germany that we see.

And in the United States, there hasn't

been a shift in power. The people who

benefited from enslavement didn't have

to forfeit all that they benefited from.

The people who actually fought against

the United States were quickly restored

into power and didn't have to give up

anything as a result of that. The people

who lynched others were never held

accountable. Even in the 1960s, the

moment we're in now, is a is, I think, a

consequence because we never required

accountability. We didn't even require

people who disenfranchised black people

for a century to say, "I'm sorry. I'm

wrong. We shouldn't have done that."

Most of them voted against the Voting

Rights Act in 1965. These southern

Congress members, and they just began

scheming for ways to maintain

political disenfranchisement. It's the

absence of reckoning that allows the

problems that contribute to these issues

to continue. It's interesting to me how

much the memorials in other places

informed what you have done here. And

being here, I thought a lot about

Holocaust museums,

>> concentration camps, right? That that

exists very much in my family's history.

And I had a similar feeling here that I

have there that confronting the

Holocaust,

it doesn't make me afraid of Germans.

>> It makes me afraid of human beings.

that confronting

that photo of people in their Sunday

best looking at a man hanging from a

tree doesn't make me afraid afraid of

Americans

or you know whatever county that might

have happened in the people of that

county. It makes me afraid of of human

beings

>> that what we are capable of is very easy

for us to deny.

>> Yeah. And it's also a mistake, I think,

and to to assume that it's only what

they are capable of.

>> Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm glad to

hear you say that because that's the

goal. You know, people will say, "Well,

my people never enslaved anybody." As if

somehow that exonerates them from living

in a community where the hotels and the

uh railroads and the business and the

insurance, all of that was trafficking

in the commerce of slavery. You didn't

have to enslave someone to benefit from

slavery. And so that's not the right

framework. If you're looking for a

personal exoneration in that way, that's

not going to get us where we need to go.

We are succeeding if we can get people

to think past the particulars of the

moment, the particulars of the era,

which is what a lot of people do when

they tell you, "Don't talk about that.

That's in the past. It doesn't matter

anymore." They're trying to reduce it to

a particular phenomena. Stop. Why are

you talking about slavery? That happened

a long time ago.

I think if you truly appreciate the

harms of slavery, if you truly

appreciate the harms of lynching, if you

truly get to the horrors and the harms

of segregation,

then you'll you'll begin to never want

to tolerate abuse of power. You'll never

want to exploit people who have less uh

privilege. You'll you'll you'll begin to

talk against hatred. And I think part of

why I value making this a human story

and recognizing the humanity of every

person is because it stops mattering

where you are in the story. You just

know that that is wrong. There's not

much in the museum about the

abolitionists or about the Civil War. Uh

there's a lot about enslavement, but

Frederick Douglas is not absent, but

he's not highly present.

um say nothing of Lincoln or

sort of anything in that kind of vast

movement that ended this horror

and particularly the parts of it that

did so when it seems so remote

>> right when I read the biographies of

Douglas or others

>> and there's just such a long period I

mean now we see it on the other side of

the story

>> but when that work was so unlikely

Why?

>> Well, if you ask some most people in

this country, um, what do you know about

slavery? They'll say, well, we know

there was a civil war. Can you identify

anybody who Frederick Douglas,

>> maybe Harriet Tubman?

Um, and it doesn't help them understand

anything about slavery. To know that

someone escaped and then did these

remarkable things, that's an achievement

narrative. Um, but I think it's

misleading to reduce slavery to the

story of abolitionists

or to reduce slavery to the success of

Frederick Douglas because what that does

is actually allows you to avoid the pain

and the harm and imagine that it created

this opportunity for this great man to

emerge. What you need to know about

slavery was how cruel it was, how

horrific it was, how how painful it was,

the ways in which it distorted. I I and

and

most people haven't thought about what

it was like to be a mother, an enslaved

mother, and to give birth to a child,

maybe even as a product of rape, and

have to decide, do I love this child or

not? half the people I know are being

sold away from their children or their

children are being sold away from them.

If I love this child, my heart's going

to be broken, so maybe I shouldn't love

this child so much because it's just too

fragile. It's too uh likely that they'll

be pulled away from me. And when you

learn that most of these mothers chose

to love despite the threat that they

would be sold, despite the threat, the

fact that this was a product of sexual

violence and rape, you begin to see

something different about that enslaved

woman. You begin to understand something

different about these people. And if you

don't understand that, then you're going

to misunderstand the nature of slavery.

My great-grandfather was enslaved in

Caroline County, Virginia. And even

though he was enslaved and enslaved

people could lose their life for trying

to read or write. It was against the

law. My great-grandfather learned to

read or write as a teenager. He risked

his life to learn to read or write as a

teenager because he had a hope of

freedom. This is the 1850s. He didn't

know a civil war was coming, but he had

a hope of freedom. And he learned to

read or write. And my grandmother told

me after emancipation, something I never

talked about uh before, that my

great-grandfather would read the

newspaper to formerly enslaved people

who he would invite to their house once

a week so they would know what was going

on. He would stand on the porch and read

the newspaper from front to back and and

people who didn't know how to read or

write would hear him read. And my

grandmother said she loved the fact that

her dad knew how to read. And she said,

"When my dad started reading, I would

push my siblings aside." And she said,

"I would get near him and I would just

wrap my arms around his leg." I said,

"Mama, why'd you do that?" She said,

"Well, I would wrap my arms around his

leg because I wanted to learn to read,

too." And she said, "I thought you learn

to read by touching somebody while they

read." And he taught my grandmother to

read or write, and she would insist that

we would read. I would sometimes go to

visit her. She'd make these desserts

that smelled so good. I'd go run. She'd

say, "Come on, Brian, get this pie." and

I'd go run and she'd be in front of the

kitchen with a stack of books. She'd

make you read for the dessert. But what

I realized is that there was power in

the hopes of those who'd come before me.

I felt lifted up by generations of

people who had struggled. And that's

what we're trying to do with this

history. We want to be very direct about

the harms and the and the and the

horrors of slavery. But we also want

people to understand the resilience, the

power, the strength, the courage, the

character of people to love in the midst

of agony. It then gives you something to

celebrate in a new way. Uh when you get

to the national monument and we decided

to take the names of the four million

who were emancipated, who for the first

time in American history could have a

surname that happened in 1870. It was

the first time uh enslaved people in

this country got to have a surname. But

to now have those 122,000 names on that

monument that's 43 feet tall and 150

feet wide and to see the descendants of

enslaved people in this country finally

have a place to go where they can

connect to their enslaved ancestors

with pride for their capacity to

survive, their capacity to love, their

capacity to endure. I just think um is

really important. We're trying to help

people understand there's power in

knowing who we are and what we've done.

There's power in appreciating our

capacity to overcome not just slavery

and lynching and segregation but

anything that diminishes us that pushes

us away from these broad and beautiful

ideas.

And I really am energized by it. There's

nothing that undid me

>> across the museum the way the narratives

of people's of slaves commitments to

their families did.

>> Absolutely.

>> And over and over and over again, I

would

see the pictures.

>> Yeah.

>> Or read the stories or read their words

and think about

>> my seven-year-old.

>> Yeah. There's one in which a young kid

the father who's being taken from him

talks about him running and like trying

to hit the chains around as if to break

them.

>> Yeah.

>> You know, or the um men and women parted

from each other.

>> Yeah.

>> You know, there and people's names are

changed to go back to what you were

saying about the names. When you're when

the people you love are taken from you,

>> you will very likely never see them

again.

>> So, not do I take nothing away from that

heroism. I I actually found it to be the

most affecting. Yeah.

>> Right. The the commitment to the

fundamental [snorts] nature of being a

human being, which is loving and caring

>> for yours.

>> And there's nothing I found to be more

indicative of like

>> the way people turn themselves into

monsters in the system than that they

would do this to than that they would

>> force people to advertise themselves on

a slave block.

>> Yeah.

>> And then whip them for crying upon

separation from those they love. Right.

it it just it I I find it unimaginable.

>> So when I ask about the abolitionists, I

don't ask to reduce the story of slavery

to to a narrative about them. But the

reason I do ask about them and the

reason I want to do it from a different

angle is that you've been talking here

about

>> what it means to inhabit these moments

and ask

how could that be me?

>> Mhm.

>> Right? what it means to inhabit this

moment and ask not just how could you

identify with the man who is lynched,

but what does it mean to identify with

the people watching the man be lynched?

But there's also something if you're

thinking about how these stories lead

you towards justice.

What does it mean to commit yourself to

that when it's not easy? When it's not a

majoritarian position, when you don't

see the civil war

>> coming?

>> Yeah. And yes, like the story of

Frederick Douglas or Garrison or all

these different people, it can be

reduced down to cliche, but it's also

not just cliche. I mean, the

abolitionist movement, all these

movements, they are their own incredible

unlikely acts. So, I I understand why

you didn't focus on in the museum, but

how do you take it yourself?

>> Well, I just I I

mean, I think it is an intentional

choice. I think

I think we've tended to make the

abolitionists

the heroes of the anti-slavery movement

that they were the leaders who won the

struggle for emancipation.

And I just think that's not

complete. I even think it borders on

dishonesty.

I think the four million the 10 million

people who were enslaved over 246 years

and found a way to hold on to their

humanity and the dignity. There's

nothing more that contributes to

abolition than to stay human when you're

being treated as an enslaved person to

hold on to your dignity when you're

being denied your dignity. To hold on to

your humanity when your humanity is

being crushed.

I I think they are the heroes of that

story. They are the champions. And you

could be in Boston writing in nice and

polite things that others can read, but

that's not the hard thing about enduring

enslavement. It's not the hard thing.

It's not going to be the thing that gets

us where we're trying to go. And so I

don't have any

um problems with all of those who did

all that they did. I think we are not

acknowledging

the power, the strength, the the courage

it took to endure those husbands and

wives and children and siblings that

spent their last nickels and dimes to

find their loved ones after

emancipation. You have to understand

that heart if you really want to

understand how did slavery end. And and

similarly in the civil rights context,

you know, I I I love Dr. King. I love

Mrs. Parks. I had the privilege of

getting to know. I love the names that

are known by other people,

but it's the cooks and the maids and the

laborers who had to walk three miles

every day to get to work cuz they didn't

have a car, then walk three miles back

to get home. It's Georgia Gilmore who

was making food for other people because

she knew that some people would never

have time to eat. [snorts] It's these

ordinary people doing extraordinary

things. It's the 50,000 black people in

this city, most of whom whose names will

never be known again. Nothing but

admiration for Frederick Douglas. But we

actually use the words of William Wells

Brown at Freedom Monument Sculpture

Park, who was also like Douglas, someone

who escaped slavery. But what he writes

about is the pain of enslavement. He

wants people to understand what it was

like to hear his mother being whipped

when he had been pulled into the house

to work inside the house, but his mother

was still out in the field. He wants

people to read about his heartbreak when

he tried to escape and was caught. Those

are the stories I think that are

important to understanding this legacy.

>> His story was very very powerful to read

as it creates a sort of narrative as you

move through the park.

>> So he tells a story of escaping with his

mother

>> at one point

>> and they're traveling and and

they feel near

>> to freedom. M

>> it's a particularly difficult pillar to

read because

>> you can begin to feel

>> that they're going to be caught and they

are

>> but the part that has stuck with me is

they're caught by functionally bounty

hunters

and he's bound and they're taken and and

they're being taken back but the they

and the the hunters stop for the night

somewhere to to spend the night and the

people who hunted them, who captured

this man and his mother and are going to

bring them back to terrible punishment,

maybe death, definitely bondage,

>> take out a Bible

and read from it to everybody that

night.

>> And and he talks in that in in that

recounting of it about,

well, how is it that this person

>> Yeah.

>> imagines himself to be a Christian? And

Christianity is so present in the

museum. It is so present on all sides of

the conflict of the civil rights

movement, but also of the people

fighting the civil rights movement,

>> right? The KKK is a Christian

organization.

>> Um, it's so present in slavery.

>> Even just from the perspective of story,

how do you understand

how the same book, [laughter] the same

words

can take such different forms? Well, I

think again um

Christianity when you have a lot of

power, when you have a lot of status can

be corruptive. Uh

and the gospels speak to this. They they

they they basically say wealth and power

and privilege is something that will

make you a bad Christian. It will it

will keep you away from the kingdom of

God. And Unfortunately,

um, in a nation as wealthy and powerful

and privileged as our nation, there's

just not as much emphasis on that. I

actually think I would love I want I

want everybody to come to our spaces but

I want particularly Christians to come

and I just want them to ask themselves

were those Christians on the right side

not just of history but on the right

side of theology of Christianity of

faith who tried to justify and defend

slavery. Similarly,

when Christians were saying, "No, black

people over here, white people over

here." The the the biggest proponent of

segregation, the loudest opponent of the

Montgomery bus boycott was the pastor of

the Baptist church here in Montgomery.

Were they good Christians? Were they

good believers? Or were they misled? Did

something get between them and true

Christianity? And if you ask that

question and you have to say yes, it

just prompts then these new questions

for you, for how you function, how you

believe. If we believe we are called to

do justice and love mercy and walk

humbly, do you think those things should

be easy or do you think those things are

going to be hard? I can tell you they're

going to be hard. And so you have to

prepare yourself to do something hard.

The good news is is that we have been

empowered to do the hard thing because

of our faith. I mean, I've always

believed I had to believe things I

haven't seen. I I mean, you know, nobody

in my family had gone to college before.

I had to believe that even though I

hadn't seen it, I'd never met a lawyer.

I had to believe I could be something

I'd never seen. We came to Alabama in

1980s to represent people on death row.

Everybody says, "You can't help anybody

on death row in Alabama. You'll never

win a case." We had to believe we could

make a difference even though we hadn't

seen it. And even today, I have to

believe that there is something better

waiting for us in America. It's not that

hard to have hope. It's not that hard to

believe that. I walk these streets of

Montgomery knowing that the generation

that came before me would put on their

Sunday best. They'd go places to push

for the right to vote. They'd get

battered and bloodied and beaten while

they were praying on their knees. and

then they would go back home, wipe the

blood off, pick their Bibles back up,

and do it again. I stand on the

shoulders of people who did so much more

with so much less. And so, I just think

that's where Christianity has power.

That's where faith has power. It doesn't

just have to be Christianity. It's the

ability to believe things that we

haven't seen, to do things that haven't

been done before. It is the engine that

drives the power of faith. And that's

what Dr. King and the civil rights

community, I think, got so right. They

knew that they could empower people who

had lived lives rooted in that view to

now challenge segregation, to challenge

this racial order. This is my own view.

But one thing I often think about is

that

spirituality, great spiritual teachers,

mystics, they are unruly and they are

disruptive.

>> Mhm.

>> It's true of Jesus. Yeah.

>> True of any prophet you might want to

name.

>> That's right.

>> And religions over time, not every

single one of them, not at all times,

>> but they often come to prize order.

>> Yeah.

>> And spirituality often wants to reorder

the world. And religions often want to

maintain it order because they're built

around the world as it is. And

one of the places you saw that and you

see it so often in the history of

slavery of civil rights, but you have a

recruiting bill from I believe the

Citizens Council.

>> Mhm.

>> Which is, you know, a group in the South

>> built to fight civil rights. And it's

trying to convince other, you know,

white citizens to give their $4, give

their $6.

>> And what it promises him isn't white

supremacy. It's racial harmony.

>> Yeah.

>> It says, "We are here to maintain racial

harmony in Selma."

>> Yeah.

>> That we if you work with us, we'll get

you another decade of racial harmony

>> in Selma.

>> And the way that the status quo, the

order of oppression can look like

harmony to those. is it is not harming.

You read histories of the civil rights

act and civil rights uh activists are

always called agitators.

>> They're agitating things.

>> Yeah, that's right.

>> Yeah. No, I think you're absolutely

right. If you think religion creates

stability, if you think religion creates

calm, if you if it if you think it

creates order, then that will be your

narrative. That will be the message that

you try to give to people. And that's

exactly what happened. So, the White

Citizens Council in Montgomery was very

small until the Montgomery bus boycott

and it grew

dramatically. The mayor wasn't a member,

the police chief wasn't a member until

the Montgomery bus boycott. But every

month of that boycott, thousands and

thousands more people started joining

the White Citizens Council. All because

black people were not riding the bus.

And they saw that as destabilizing. They

saw that as and because Dr. King was

articulating these things that people

hadn't articulated before and he was

challenging them. And when you listen to

these speeches he gave, he would say at

the mass meetings that we have to help

our white brothers and sisters. He says

because segregation is evil.

>> We're living with the conditions of

slavery and then later segregation.

Many negroes lost faith in themselves.

Many came to feel that perhaps

they were less than human.

Many came to feel that they were

inferior.

This, it seems to me, is the greatest

tragedy of slavery, the greatest tragedy

of segregation. Not merely what it does

to the individual physically, but what

it does to one psychologically.

It scars the soul of the segregated as

well as the segregator.

It gives the segregator a false sense of

superiority

while leaving the segregated with a

false sense of inferiority. And this is

exactly what happened.

>> It was brilliant, but it was

particularly enraging to the White

Citizens Council because he was actually

saying, "Hey, white people, I've got

something to help you, too." And that's

what made it so

provocative because he was saying we

need a new order. We need a new future.

>> With this faith, we will be able to

transform this pending cosmic energy

into a creative storm of peace and

brotherhood. With this faith, we will be

able to speed up the day when all of

God's children, black men and white men,

Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and

Catholics, Hindus and Muslims, theists

and atheists will be able to join hands

and sing in the words of the Holy Negro

spiritual, free at last. Free at last.

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.

And that's why both in Christianity and

in a lot of religions, there's a message

to the wealthy and the power and the

privilege is woe to you wealthy. Woe to

you privileged people. You have to think

differently than your wealth and your

privilege will push you to think. You

have to think differently than your

status will push you to think. And and

that's I I think something that some

people of faith are embracing and using

in very powerful ways. And there's

that's something that others are not.

The civil rights movement, I feel it

when I watch the videos here. Um I feel

it when I read the histories of it. It

is hard for me to believe it existed.

>> And that's true for, as you were saying

a minute ago, the names we associate

with it. The Martin Luther King Jr.'s

Rustin,

but it's even more true for the people

who showed up at marches who were never

going to be written about

>> and who did so knowing

they might take a brick to the head.

There's a I think it's a picture in the

museum and you just see a

white man swinging a baseball bat at the

back of a black woman.

>> Yes. Yeah. and people who came day after

day, you know, the people who decided to

send their children

into the teeth of Bull Connor,

>> right, who chose to do that and that was

very very controversial and the, you

know, Martin Luther King Jr. and others

were

>> heavily criticized for it.

>> It that

and to say nothing of just the the bus

boycott which went on not for a week or

a month but nearly a year.

>> Yeah. Over a year. Over a year. 382

days.

>> And it

it's almost a hard text because I think

people look at it and the restraint

and the love

it doesn't feel right. I almost think

it's easier to imagine yourself

suffering or inflicting suffering,

right? Like being a victim

>> or being a perpetrator.

>> Yeah.

>> Than to choose to absorb suffering

>> with that kind of grace and restraint.

>> Yeah. and and yeah, I wonder how you

>> Yeah, I mean, I think the brilliance of

that generation of leaders is that they

knew that they didn't have the economic

power, the military power, or the

political power to force change. So,

they had to use um the power they had.

And there was a morality in

um standing up against violence with

nonviolence.

Uh being well-dressed and disciplined in

the face of all of this brutality when

people were cussing and swearing at you.

You were smiling, sending your children

into um spaces where they would be fire

hosed or uh menaced by dogs or beaten

and brut brutalized.

It was a profound

unprecedented

use of kind of moral power of

um using uh humanity to confront the

inhumity of those who abuse. It's hard,

credibly difficult, but I think people

had an appreciation that that's what it

was going to take. When Dr. King gives

the first speech at the first mass

meeting and he's being very he's you

know he's you know ornate with his

language. He's got all of the flourishes

but he and he's being very methodical

and he's saying in what happened to Rosa

Parks but at some point after laying it

all out what he says is but we're tired

now and that's when everybody erupts. It

was the It was the exhaustion of

constantly dealing with

the status quo, the humiliation, the

degradation, the constant threats and

menacing that people said, "We want our

freedom and we want our freedom now."

And most of them were prepared to die

for their freedom.

And in a lot of ways,

I I appreciate that and I recognize

that. I do because I'm in my 60s. I've

been representing people on death row

and children in courts for 40 years.

I've been fighting

um for a more just system. I want to end

cruelty and abuse of people in prisons.

I want all of those things. I'm a

product of Brown versus Board of

Education

at a time when I don't think we could

win Brown versus Board of Education. And

I think we've retreated so much. And no

matter what I do, no matter what I say,

I will still go places in this country

where I am presumed dangerous and guilty

because of my color. I still have to

navigate presumptions of incompetence

because of my color. I still bear the

burden when I'm stopped by the police to

make sure that nothing tragic and

violent happens.

and so do my nephews and nieces and

their children. And it's continuing and

it's continuing. And when you have to

constantly navigate a presumption of

dangerousness and guilt because of your

color, when you have to constantly

confront presumptions of incompetence,

when you have to constantly bear the

burden of other people's ignorance, it's

exhausting. And when you get to a

certain point, you say, "I want freedom,

and I want freedom now." And to get to

that something better, we're going to

have to do some things differently. And

I'm saying things I just never imagined

I would say, but I'm saying them. I've

decided recently that I am prepared to

represent the 10 million black people

who were enslaved for 246 years in this

country. And when people try to deny

their suffering and try to deny their uh

humiliation and and distort their

stories and minimize their pain and

agony, I want to be their advocate. I

want to stand up for them and say, "No,

you need to understand this. You need to

hear this." I want to represent the

millions of black people who were forced

to leave the American South because of

terror violence. 6 million black people

fled the American South and they left

lands that they owned. They they gave up

opportunities to create wealth for their

children and grandchildren because of