Building a New Era of Truth

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There has been, I think, a split, a severing to visions of American history There' 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 been able to tell a more holistic story of the country. It's able to hold It's triumphs and its' tragedies together. It's going be 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 the founding began to really be born. People of Montgomery walk to maintain their human dignity. And they're right. This is where the Montgomery bus boycut began workk 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 Live out the true meaning of its creree which led to The triumphs and the laws that first time made America some version of the democracy and the country that it initially promised to be We hold these truts to be self evident 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 apprehending that history. holding Horror and beauty tragedy and triumph in humanity and humanity together I think sometimes of wisdom as the ability to hold ality of life, The wise you are, the more of life you can hold And I think this holds quite a bit in it Brian Stehvenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative He has done amazing work over the years, continues to do amazing work defefending 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 But over time you begin to expand that work into questions of remembrance, questions of our history and how we think about it 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 trap you in pain but doesn't force you to inhabit only an imagined Glory of a story that pushes a country forward that enhances rather reduces The bonds of brrotherhood and solidarity between the people within it As always, my email as a cllent show at NYimes. com Brian Stevenson, welcome to the show. Thank you So we're speaking here notot long before. two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America What's your relationship You know, I think anniversaries are always a time for reflection to think about who we are where we've been But for me, more importantly, where are we going? You, I think about this moment in terms of What will people be talking about on our three hundredth anniversary The cage match I hope that we will be past ical violence as a way to commemorate our nation I don't. 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 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 sitting in a place Two commemorate Seriously, to stare unflinchingly at someome of the most brutal violent. horrible moments in American history and not just the moments, but the Oh that this violence was inflicted upon. And we're going to talk about different pieces of the museum that move me and what they mean One question I have 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 for the idea of America, the story of America I moved to Montgomery in the nineteen eighties. We had fifty nine markers and monuments to the Confederacy The three largest high schools here were Robert E. Lee High, Jefferson Davis High, Syidney Leenier High popation had to walk around in a space that shouted the history of the Confedery and would not even whisper the history of slavery. you could not find the word sl slavery or enslavement anywhere in the city landscape And I think that does something unhealthy for everybody. And so 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 It's a very familiar way of helping the world reckon with human rights violations. I mean, we have Nearly two hundred Holocaust museums across the world. We have over forty in the United States. I think we need all of them. And 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 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 lynching of abuse of other people who are disfavored. We've never created a relationship with 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 this history Dald 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 hour racial history, trying to create a reckoning with it are trying to take the story of American 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 sixteen, nineteen project And the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda ideological poison that if not removed will dissolve The civific bonds that tie us together will destroy our country. In answer to the New York Times six thousand nineteen project, They create the seventeen seventy six project one of both the sources of their political strength and 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 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 change the world is something that we all embrace and celebrate communication. It 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 Becauseuse 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 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 and all of these academies What they study are the mistakes we have made during our past. It's the misjudgments during war. It's the miscalculations that created ces 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 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 unburden ourselves from the parts of our history that hold us back And I genuinely believe that. And 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, Alburn or, Alabama. But there was this intensity around college football that I didn't quite understand. I thought, oh, they don't have a professional sports team. That's what it No, it's more than that There's an identity that has evolved in this state. connect it 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 And I just want to step back few decades. And remind people that George Wallace stood in front of the University of Alabama schoolchoolhouse 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 then on those game days. 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 Kicks in New York City right now. That triumph is a state triumph. It's an everybody triumph And the only thing I want to acknowledge is that you owe that to the civil Rights movement owe that to the courageous people who said, no, we reject segregation forever And if we understand that Then we begin to imagine, well, 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 can make a real argument that Montgomery is a birthplace of American democracy. Not where it wass conceived R? There's a conception of American democracy that happens in Arguably seventeen seventy six, you know, or maybe before that, depending on how you want to think about it America is not a democracy until at least after The Civil Rights and the Voting rightights Acts, on any real Measure that we would recognize today. Yeah And what turnurns that begins here with a bus boycot And this place is not just a Monument segregation or Jim Crow The civil rightights movement, 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 N hererroism disappears that you ces to see that as America too or vice versa That feels like aial Sure relationship our history, like wisdom is holding both things as part of the American synthesis. I even think it actually starts earlier than that. I U 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 extraordinary it was that when those four million People 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 happened 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 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 Bet future. It collapse play And that's what gives rise to A century of segregation in 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. 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 Understand what happens in nineteen fifty five, I think we need to have some appreciation for what happened in eighteen sixty five 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 happened in nineteen fifty five People finally said, we're going to challenge this. They were belieelieving in an America that would respect them, that would respond to their challenge. to stay off the buses, every black person in this community, fifty thousand 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 swim end, where they might be poisoned or threatened with acid, to commit to read ends, where they might get beaten and pulled out of libraries, to commit to freedom ridise, where Riters were bloody, brutalized and to commit to all of that activism and struggle, that then yielded This incredible moment in nineteen sixty five, 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 why we have at our Montgomery Square this language, the decade that changed the world One thing that the museums and the Sculpture sites in the monuments here that you have together One thing they do really beautifully is what you did there, which is Sh this as an integrated history There's no one moment There's no eras disconnected from each other. And so it begins even before sllavery in this country begins the beginning a slave trade when you walk in the museum. Youre greeted with waves and I I spend a lot of time with data visual stations in my day.. I'm not usually very moved by them. You have one is visualizing the flow of ships of slave shhips And where they went, right, which is not initially primarily to America. That's right. The slave trade was much more global than that You begin to see as you takeick into the seventeen hundreds, the eighteen hundreds. concentrate in America towards cotton towards the south, towards those riches And this I think the first thing that began to really settle in to my soul from being at the museum. madeade me think about the people on the ships into Iice. One is, and you have incredibly moving installations around this The people ripped from there homes and their families pregnant women children. and wo million die in the crossing, There 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 And one thing that was really present for me throughout the work you all have done here 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. notot see that you that they were humans and that you had become . to do all this with a Bible in your hand Yeah Curious. having sat in so much of this how you understand thoseose stories were. Yeah that led people to sacrifice their humanity and to so betray the humanity of the people they were enslaved. I think that's such an important question And transatlantic trade in that water in the Atlantic Ocean Um, just his backdrop you know, that exhibit really came out of my first trip to Africa. And 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 Misconnect. I was supposed to give a speech in Abujia in Nigeria and I got there too late and so they sent somebody 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 to stay in a hotel. You're going to stay with me and my family. My son is excited to meet you and he's going to share. So he was very he was committed to giving me an authentic experience He's I had to show you Lagos. It it was like eleven o'clock at n 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 I was tired, but it was rich. And he took me all around the city and I finally said, manan, I gott to get a little rest. Can Can we just go home and get I got to get up early? Ple said, Okay, one more place. And We 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 Fast food play nothing beautiful about it. He said, comeome on, come on Cimbed 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 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 twenty four 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 Honestly, 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 byy 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 you have to ask, well, how do you think of yourself as moral and decent and Christian? pulling away a screaming woman from her children Knowing 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 that. Aolutely and you abuse 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 saying. 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 advance 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 two hundred and forty six 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 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 continued And it some 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 would imagine it should be They 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 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 nineteen seventies, you know, we had three hundred thousand people in our jails and prisons until the nineteen seventies And by the end of the century, we had over two 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 client, people are trying to kill the people I represent. It's heartbreaking to me I'm working in a case now involving a ten year old child The people in this state that refuse to put this child In the juvenile system, they're trying to keep him in the adult system ten year old boy And because there's no place for ten year old children in the adult system, what they do with the ten 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 there's a prosecutor. But judges don't have to get close to the people they send. 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 are rates of arrest and I would want them to go and actually see the lives of children, seeee what's happening to kids who' 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 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 that's what happens to a lot of law enforcement. You only see people on their worst day and that makes you angry 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 thirteen in this state we've been condemned in this way, ks of color And the judges are almost all white I was in the lynching room, one of the things and I found that Of Everything I sat in here to be the hardest. Yeah space to sit in. Yeah twowo things really sat with me. One was because you have put up all this coverage of lynchings, right? Newspapers and announcements and invitations. Come out to see the lynching Yeah. Kids O thirteen year olds, of fifteen year olds, there's one in which an infant That's right is lynched. Yeah Yeah that' right? justust as a This is what happened. this is what we did And then the other was other dimension of the news reports that you put up on it. The thirst for violence and and the the like There were multiple we, 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 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 was a prosecutor near that child in a room with that child 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 you can feel Pulsing fear behind it. particularly if there's ever evidence of revolt of violence of people trying to 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 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 atimes, I think, lynched, but certainly brutalized during slavery going at night who try to see their wife who has been moved.. or their mother There's something about this nearness but not Yeah closeness. I think that's right. I mean, the people who were most at risk of lynching violence twentieth century were black veterans after World War I and bllack veterans after World War twoI. Why? Because they had gone to Europe and fought. they'd 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 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 It is not good for you to enslave another human being I don't want you to do that 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 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 effort to liberate everybody to uplift everybody, not just the people who 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 the Some of the children are in ties, right? They dress them up for the occasion. I was thinking as you said some of that about the word narrative I'm trying to open up what I felt about that 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 o way that they were and were not able. T register plain facts of the world in front of them whichich isn't to say it's not a narrative or not a story, but 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 Des Hart Visseecting animals and's a scream R 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 ne of the parts of the museum that I really spend 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. there a moment when you saw something D 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 there's a wall of them in the museum The slaves are people are described as able to learn anything completely trustworthy of a great family. Right? they read almost like collollege endorsement letters because they're trying to get the highest price for them Yeah. And so on the one hand, there's this narrative is story of brutishness, of subhumanity, of incapacity. And then it's Peter is a master bricklayer and you see something happening What is known but can't be admitted. Yeah. Well, I think Asolutely right that The reality Being with another human being, seeing another person's humanity is always going to emerge in ways that are powerful. No I grew up in segregation I know For Brown vers.us Board of Education, I would have had a life where there was no engagement with people who are white. But because of that decision laawyers came into our community made them open up to public schools And I began interacting with white Kid and they began interacting with me And by the end of high school Gosh, they elected me to be the president of the student body, which would have been inconceivable, notot because I was particularly special, but just because we were able to get to a place of relationship. And 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 twentieth century There were very few places where people 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 seventy six. percent 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 that separation has continued, and that's the tragedy of the narrative that keeps us apart. 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 tears in her eyes 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 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 do think that dissonance, which you see in those ads, is a dissonance that was intentional that was 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 podcast is supported by the New York Community Trust. 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Try our personalized energy savings tips or explore budget billing, which helps to spread out your biggest payments. Visit coned dot com slash bill help to get started because taking control is New York This brings us in way to two hundred fiftieth to seventeen seventy six. You can see it in the foundounding fathers C Many of them new and left eloquent writings to the effect of slavery is a moral horror 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 sllaves 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 end now to say that the problem was Everyone believed a story that wasn't true. Many people knew the story wasn't true or they believed multiple stories at one time It's sometimes hard Costly upon what you know is Tue 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 with what they did not do. It's not just dishonest, it's misleading. It will allow you to believe that greatness 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 ever 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 larger society. Let me have you expand on that because I think it's a very profound statement that And I want to remember how you said it 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 feelailings Your country's failings is not compleess so much as a kind of overwhelm. that you will be overwhelmed by the darkness I tell me why you don't believe that? Well, I just I don't I think we have too many examples of that not happening to fear that 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 ticket will arbitrarily assign you a label that says white. col 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 participating with apartheid. And I went with three or four Swedish learwerss 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 to oh no. And he 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 That sense of discomfort before you even go in And when you go to the What what did it feel like for you? Well I walk right through the white door, it didn't bother me. I mean, you know, because I understood what they were trying to do U, They were trying to get you to imagine, to appreciate to kind of engage with the arbitrariness of that regime There were rooms in that museum where there were Ns is 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 two hundred meters in Berlin without seeing the Stopppelstein and the markers and the monuments dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust. The Holocaust memorial sits in the center. U Berlland, there's like 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, Ohh, 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 didn't tell me about Berlin And in the decade or so that his Pastinson You know, maybe a bit less. we've seen the rise of the AFD And at the nuclear core of the AFD, I mean, They have an argument about immigration and many other things 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 twentieth century and where it stands today in the twenty first century in less than eightighty years That nation has transformed itself and it wasn't immediate She talked about the Holocaust, you'd booed, you'd get You'd get shouted at What has happened there in the last eighty 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 principple difference, of course is that in South Africa there was a change in power A bllack majority took over And they were insisting on reckoning with the history of the a 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 nineteen sixties, the moment we're in now is I think a consequence because we never required accountability. We didn't even require people who disenfranchised bllack 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 nineteen sixty five. 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 and other places inform what you have done here and Being here, I thought a lot about cross museums concentration camps, right that That exists very much in my family's history And I had a Similar feeling here I have there The confronting. The Holocaust. It doesn't make me afraid of Germans It makes me afraid of human beings confronting that photo. peopleeople in their Sunday best looking at a man hanging from a tree. doesn't make me afraid of Americans or whatever county that might have happened in the people of that county, it makes me afraid of human beings. Yeah. what we are capable of is Very easy for us to deny. Yeah And it's also a mistake, I think in 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 were the hotels and the 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 particulars of the moment, the particulars of the arow 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 particular phenomen. Stop, why are you talking about S slaveryy? 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 privilege. you begin to talk against hatred I think part of why I value making this a human story. of 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 Douglas is not absent, but he's not highly present. Um Nothing of Lincoln or sort of anything in that kind of vast movement that endnded this and How do you? The parts of it did so when it seems so remote 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, Well,, if you ask some most people in this country, 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. I think it's misleading to reduce slavery to the story of abolitionists 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 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 painful it was, the ways in which it distorted, and Most people haven't thought about what it was like. too be a mother, an enslaved mother 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 likely that they'll be pulled away from me And when you learned that Most of these mothers chose to love despite the threat. that they would be sold despite the threat the fact 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 these people. And if you don't understand that Th 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 It's the eighteen fifties. he didn't know a civil warar was coming, but he had a hope for freedom. and he learned to read or write And my grandmother told me after emancipation, something I never talked about 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 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 And 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 legs. said, Mama, why' you do that She said, Well, I would wrap my arms around this leg because I wanted to learn to read too And she said, I thought you learned 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 running She said, comeome on, Brian, get this pie and I'd go run it and'd 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 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 when you get to the National Monument and we decided to take the names of the four million who emancipated who for the first time in American history could have a surname That happened in eighteen seventy. It was the first time. enslaved people in this country got to have a sning, but to now have those one hundred twenty two thousand names on that monument That's forty three feet tall and one hundred and fifty 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. cry for their capacity to survive, their capacity to love, their capacity to endure I just think 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 just slavery and lynching and segregation, but anything diminishes us, that pushes us away from these broad and beautiful ideas. I really am energized by it There's nothing that undid me across the museum the way But narratives of peoples of slaves commitments to their families de. 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' one of which a young kid The father who is being taken from him talks about him running and trying to hit the chains r as if to break them you know, or the men and women parted from each other. Yeah You know, and people's names were changed to go back to what you were saying about the names when you're when the people you've ever taken from you you will very likely never see them again. So now do I take nothing away from that heroism, I actually found it to be the most affecting right that commitment to the fundamental 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 then that they would do this to then that they would force people to advertise themselves on a slave block and then whip them for crying upon separation from those they love. right? It just I find it Unimaginable. Yeah So when I ask about the abolitionists, I don't ask to reduce the story of slavery 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 it you've been talking here about what it means to inhabit these moments and ask How could that be me what it means to inhabit this moment and ask notot just how could you identify with the man who has lynched But what does it mean to identify with the people watching the man be lynched But there is 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 comoming 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 I'm just why you didn't focus on in the museum, but how do you take it yourself? Well I just I mean, I think it is an intentional choice. I think intend it to make the abolitionists The heroes of the anti slavery movement 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 ten million people who were enslaved over two hundred and forty six years and found a way to hold onto their humanity and the dignity. There's nothing more that contributes to abolition to stay human when you're being treated as an enslaved person. T hold ont to your dignity when you're being denied your dignity, to hold on to your humanity when your humanity is being crushed 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. 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 all of those who did all that they did, but I think we are not acknowledging that power, the strength, the courage it took to endure thoseose 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 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 It's the cooks and the maids and the laborers who had to walk three miles every day to get to work because they didn't have a car Th then walk three miles back to get home It's Georia Gilmore, who was making food for other people because she knew that some people would never have time to eat It's these orrdinary people doing extraordinary things. It's the fifty thousand black people in the 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 Welles 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 and They're traveling and and they feel near to freedom. It's a particularly difficult ill her to read because You can begin to feel Yeah going to be caught and they are partart that is stuck with me is they're caught by F functionally bounty hunter and he's bound and they're taken and they're being taken back, but they and the hunters for the night somewhere 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, deffinitely bondage Take out a Bible and read from it to everybody that night. And he talks in that in that recounting of it about Well, how is it that this person imagines himself to be a Christian Christianity is so present in the museum. It is so present All sides conflict of the civil rights movement, but also of the people Fighting the civil rightights movement. KKK is a Christian organization U it's so present in Savery Even just from the perspective of story, how do you understand How the same book, the same words can take such different forms. Well, I think Again, Christianity when you have a lot of power, when you have a lot of status can be D U And Gospels speak to this. they basically say wealth and power and tririvilege is something that will make you a bad Christian. 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, bllack people over here, white people over here. The biggest proponent of segregation, the loudest opponent of the Montgomery busus boycott was Pastor of the Baptist church here in Montgomery Were they good Christians, wereere 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 mean, you know, Nobody 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 the nineteen eighties to represent people on death row Everybody said 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 the streets of Montgomery knowing that the generation that came before me would put on their Sunday bestest, 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 I just think that's where Christianity has power. That's where faith has power. It doesn't just have to be Christianity.'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 King and the civil rights community, I think got so right They knew that they could empower people who are liive lives rooted in that view to now challenge segregation to challenge this racial order This is my own view One thing I often think about is that Sirituality a great spiritual teacher is mystics. They are unruly and they're disruptive Jesus, true of any prophet you might want to name. That's right releligions over time Not every single one of them, not at all times. But they often come to price order. Yeah and spirituality often once do reorder the world And religions often want to Maintain it sortder 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 Savery of civil rights But you have a recruiting Bill from I believe the Citizens Council which is, you know, group in the South. to fight Civil rights And it's trying to convince other know white citizens to give their four dollars, give their six dollars promises him Isn't white supremacy It's racial harmony Yeah It says we are here to maintain racial harmony and Slma that we if you work with us, we'll get you another decade of racial harmony. Soma and the way that The status quo, the order impression can look like harmony to those it is not arming You read histories of the Civil Rights Act and civil rights activs are always called agitators.. They're agitating things. That's right No, I think you're absolutely right. If You think religion creates stability If you think religion creates calm If you 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 boycot And it grew Dramatically, the mayor wasn't a member, the police chief wasn't a member. until the Montgomery busus boycott. 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 peopleople 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. Then later segregation Many negroes lost faith in themselves M came to feel that perhaps They were less than human. Th it 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 scs the soul of the segregated as well as the segregator It gives a segregator a false sense of superiority Wh leaving the segregated with a false sense of inferiority. this is exactly what happened Then something happened to the neegro. It was brilliant. particularly enraging to the White Citizens Council because he was actually saying Hey, white people, I've got something to help you too. That's what made it so provroocative because he was saying we need a new order. We need a new future to transform this pending cosmic energy. into a creative salm of peace and brrotherhood 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, fs and atheists will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the O He Gow sppiritual Preead last, preadl Thank God Almighty, We are free at last We have a long, long way to go before this. 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 privileges, Whoa. you wealthy. Woe to you privileged people, you have to think differently then 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 think something that some people of faith are embracing and using in very powerful ways and that's something that others are not This podcast is supported by the New York Community Trust. As a savvy New Yorker, you've probably heard of donor advised funds or DAFs, a tax smart and streamlined way to give. But did you know there's a way to use your DAF to make a powerful difference today and an enduring local impact That way is the New York Community Trust, your community Foundation. Your Daff at the Trust comes with personal service, unique giving ideas, and the satisfaction of knowing you're helping your community today and tomorrow. Visit give two.nyc today Yaoi Kusama, Andy Warhol, Maurizio Catalon and more This summer experience Guggenheim Pop, nineteen sixty to now. a vibrant look at the pop art movement and how artists are engaging with its legacy today featuring major works from the museum's collection by Jim Dne, Roy Lieichtenstein, and Klaus Oldenberg. alongside contemporary artists from around the world, this exhibition at the Guggenheim New York reveals how pop continues to shape what art can be. Learn more and get tickets at Guggenheim. org. morning walk bird watching It's another easy Sunday United Health Group makes these ordinary days possible with partners like the University of Tennessee Health Sciences, helping communities manage their health closer to home fififty four percent of participants have lowered their blood pressure, meaning fewer heart attacks and more Sundays at the park This might feel like an ordinary day. To United Healthgroup, it's the healthcare system working better for everyone. Learn more at unitedhealthgroup. com slash commitment The civil rightights movement I I feel it when I watch the videos here I feel 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., the Bard Rustins 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. 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 came day after day Bulhoo decided to send their children into the teeth of Bul Connor, rightight chose to do that. and that was very, very controversial. you know, Martinut King Jr. and others were heavily criticized for it. that to say nothing of just the bus boycott, which went on not for A week or a month, but Nearly a year. Yeah. overver a year. Over a year. threeree hundred and eighty two days. It's almost a hard catch because I think people look at it and The restraint And the love doesn't feel hum? I almost think it's easier to imagine yourself suffering or inflicting suffering Yeah, right? Like being a victim Yeah or being a perpetror 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 the power they had and there was a morality in U standing up against violence. with nonviolence being well dressed and disciplined in the face of all of this brutality, when people were cussing and swearing at you You were smiling seending your children into spaces where they would be fire hosed or menaced by dogs or beaten and brutalized was a profound Unprecedented Use of moral power. O Um using God. humanity to confront the inhumanity of those who abuse It's hard incredibly 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 you know, he's you know, ornate with his language. He's got all of the flourishes And he's been very methodical and he's saying will happen 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 eruptes It was it was the exhaustion constantly dealing with The status quo, the humiliation, the degradation, the constant It's 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 I appreciate that and I recognize that I do because I'm In my sixties, I've been representing people On death row and children in courts for forty 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 productro of Brown versus Board of Education At a time when I don't think we could win Brown versus Board of Education. I think we've retreated so much 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 ten million black people who were enslaved for two hundred and forty six years in this country And when people try to deny their suffering and try to deny their humiliation 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 terrb vinence. six million bllack people fled the American South And they left lands that they owned. They gave up opportunities to create wealth for their children and grandchildren because of teribance and our country's unwillingness to enforce the rule of law And I want to represent them as they now continue to struggle with the economic consequences of that hardship. I want to represent the people who had to deal with the humiliation and degradation of Jim Crowhen's segregation. Those signs that said white and colored, they weren't directions. they were assaults. They created real injuries. That's why I'm committed to creating this era of truth and justice, truth and repair, truth and reconciliation, truth and restoration And it needs to happen now We have to create a new era. And I say era very intentionally. It can't be like five years ago. it can't be a March for a few weeks. It's going to be it's going to take decades and we're going to have to build and we're going to have to imagine things and we're going to have to be structured and systematic and all of those things we need to create something better And that's why when I think about the two hundred and fifteth, I want to think about the three hundredth. You mentioned the difference between a moment in an era. and a moment you sort of described as what happened five years ago So as having happened five years ago. I mean, there was this moment. there was marches in the streets in Black Lives Matter and a sense that something reallyally different. I mean, it was very popularly called the Reckoning and when Biden and then Kamala Harris, you know ran for reelection, We're not going back was one of the big, right? You said, we're not going back. They said we're not going back. and then we a little bit little went back and You know and out Donald Trump is president in the two hundred fiftieth you know, and president in part on a very explicit promis to represent a very different vision of American history. When you look back on What happened five years ago? What What do you learn? what does need to be done differently? I mean, in many ways, it was too easy It was too popular Everybody just got to walk and claim something and didn't have to give anything, D didnn't have to do anything really hard And some people M', and I said, it's that hard to kind of marked under these conditions, the police weren't. really brutalizing you like they did on the Edmond Pettis Bridge. And I think the same thing was true for corporations You know who started saying, yes, diversity, equity, inclusion, Black lives matter. They didn't say it in twenty fifteen, but they were willing to say it in twenty twenty, twenty, twenty one. And we made it too easy. And I kept always arguing Look Don't say we're going to commit to diversity, equity, and inclusion without first admitting to all of the harms that you created when you denied promotions to women and people of color for the last thirty years, do report that documents The discrimination and the bigotry and the ways you held women and people of color back in your company Women and people of color who were more skilled, more competent than their white peers, but they were denied the promotions because you didn't trust women and people of color to being leaders admit to that, document that, name names, and then say Today we're going to commit to a new era where we're going to embrace diversity. We're not going to allow gender and race to keep the most qualified person from playing the leadership role. We're going to have equity. We're going to be inclusive And two things would have happened company would know that when somebody says you shouldn't do DEI, they would know how to respond to that They would say, no, we're doing this because this is what we used to do, and we're not going to do that anymore. That was wrong And this is not and people who were looking at it wouldn't think that black people and women are just getting benefits that they don't deserve That was hard for corporations and most of them wouldn't do it. They didn't do it. And so then when somebody comes along and says, No, we're going to wipe that out, they's like, okay. And so that's what I mean by an era. We've got to admit to the hard things. So this legacy of slavery is something we have to acknowledge if we're going to actually get to something better, the lynching violence and the terror violence, we have to acknowledge if we're going to create a world where mobs don't form. when our political candidate doesn't win and they engage in violent prrotest for me the lesson I joke Fred Gray, amazing lawyer, still alive who represented Dr. King and was the architect of Browo versus Galild and did so much in the nineteen So I joke with him sometimes when we get together. I said, Mr. Gray, we need to go back to nineteen sixty five And he'll say, what are we going to do when we get back to ' ninety six. if I said, you know, I think we misjudged What was needed? I wish we could get back to nineteen sixty five. And what I want to say in nineteen sixty five to Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, Louisiana. It is not enough. for you to just vote against the Voting rights Act for you to just exist. I think we should have said, all of you states that disenfranchise black people for one hundred years, you are now required to automatically register every black person when they become eighteen years of age. Wind been radical It would not have been radical. It would been a way of giving violators of that right an opportunity to reckon with it and the people who had been harmed by that, an opportunity to benefit I don't think it would have been wrong in nineteen sixty five to say you all made polling places dangerous and treacherous for black people for one hundred years So it's not right for them to have to come to the dangerous place. You should go into the black community and get their vote. Well Let me ask you not just about what you would like to have happened But how power or the narrative to make that happen There is a tremendous amount in that sort of five year period we're talking about Thatysic was right. and What we saw was it was not able to build or sustain power. In fact, it created more backlash and was able to create staying power in many ways. And so, you know, you talk about what happens on the Edmund Pettis Bridge and that is people putting themselves on the line to create Images meant to create Tower and it works to some amount. And then at a certain point, I mean, and you know this history much better than me There's white backlash to that. and you know, wait, we pass these bills. How are there still urban riots? You know, when is it going to be enough So when you talk about moving to this new Eera about the power of these narratives and you you know, What What lessons are there about? building the power because the corporations are talking about They to go back into a large analysis of who they did not promote and in what ways and open themselves to legal risk and all the rest of it. People are we talked about the appeal of the harmony of the present. the harmony of the present is very seductive. Right But it's the same thing you were saying about Christianity and faith, wanting stability. I actually think those companies that are willing to do that ome stronger companies, become healthier companies. Those are count companies that are going to thrive and create an environment for employment that's going to be so much more Div Th those that continue to hide and deny their harms So I think the problem with five years ago is it wasn't rooted We didn't require people to know the history. police violence against bllack people. We didn't require them to understand the nature of the struggle over four hundred years. We just allow people to walk with a sign And that was it. And so I think it has to be rooted. When I talk about an era Truth and justice, truth and repair, truth and reconciliation, truth and restoration I think those things are sequential I don't think you can skip the truth telling part and get to the beautiful ar words. I think we make a mistake when we do that And just again, coming from a faith tradition in my church, You can come to my church and say, oh, I want salvation and redemption and heaven and all that good stuff. But I'm not going to admit to anything. I'm not going to confess to ever doing anything wrong. The clergy in my community will say, oh, no, it doesn't work like that You have to first confess you have to repent But you shouldn't fear it. They will lovingly tell you, do not fear conffession and repentance. And I'll explain to you that confession and repentance acknowledgement is what opens up your heart grrace And mercy, that's how redemption And that's how repair happened In a love relationship, we learn that we have to sometimes be willing to say, I'm sorry. You show me two people who' been in love for fifty years. I'll show you two people who have learned how to apologize to one another When they offend, when they make a mistake We understand that personal lives, but I think the same is true in our collective life, our communal life, our national life. But there was an effort to make people Repent. There was an effort to make people reckon in a way that there hasn't been, certainly in other times in my lifetime And the place I'm pushing here isn't about whether or not I think it would be good if people did so What did you learn from the way the backlash overtook. project I mean, again, Donald Trump is going to be president for the two hundred fifteth. I was thinking before we sat down today about the way he frames. What it means to believe in America versus way Obama framed what it means to believe in America. and his framing of it. is very much to believe that America is great that the story of being a patriot is loving your country very much as it is Obama's story was very much The people who have made America great, that people have been part of the process of change are the true patriots. It was a creed written into the founding documents declare the destiny. of a nation Yes we can It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom throughrough the darkest of nights. Yes, we can It was sunng by immigrants as they struck up from distant shores and pioneers We pushed west against an unforgiving wilderness Yes, we can It was the call of workers who organized womomen who reached for the ballot A president who chose the moon as our new frontier and a king who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the promised land. Yes, we can to justice and equality. But I do think there's real way in which that the left lost patriotism to the right. It felt like it was just an endless confrontation with sins without maybe necessarily the space for grace that you're talking about And so to keep that from happening again, what do you believe should be done differently? Yeah. Well, I think first of all Um I think we've gone through a moment where our pllatforms have been dominated by people who represent perspectives that I don't think necessarily represent the perspectives of the majority of the population, but they create the debate, they create the discussion And I think we're getting better. evvaluating that and understanding that I don't think this isn an You know, this something can be shaped by accademic elites, I don't think it should be shaped by even media elites. I don't think it should be shaped by people who have By one means or another created platforms, you have to be connected King succeeded because he had the respect of every black person in this community And if he didn't, it wouldn't have worked They were connected. Before we had elected black officials You had just People doing your extraordinary things in the community, they became the leaders because of what they did, notot because they won an election Now I'm glad we have elected officials and you identify an amazing S of them, President Obamaa It takes more than that. it takes a connection. and so Number one, we have to understand That's truly who we are in this struggle Secondly, I just think There is a lot of power And appreciating Oh already done get us to where we are That is what already been done, the nature of that progress, the nature of that struggle. I mean, when people say to me Oh, it's just so much harder now. I mean, the truth is we've never been better positioned to win a narrative war to create an errow of truth and justice. There are more talented writers and journalists. There is more black journalism there's a diversity in journalism that has never existed before There's a diversity of platforms We have more scholars, we have more this, we have more everything. We're better positioned than we've ever been. The question is, do we have the will? Do we have an understanding of what we must do And I just look at different movements, different, I mean Thirty years ago, nobody would have predicted that there wouldd be marriage equality What got us to marriage equality was a narrative movement caususe people to retreat from this idea that Only a man can love a woman And we just started to see the limitations of that And then we got to the point where we could see look. It's not stable. We may see retreat That's a progress. That is real progress. that has changed the lives of real people based on that movement. I want to read you something that Donald Trump said when he announced The seventeen seventy six commommission, his response to the Times' six thousand nineteen project And he said, ourur mission is to defend the legacy of America's founding the virtue of America's heroes and the nobility of the American character must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country We want our sons and our daughters to know They're the citizens of the most exceptional nation in history of the world Something you just said to me a few times is that We and I take the we here to mean those who believe in a more just and more free America an America that is beyond where it is today have never been better positioned to win what you call the narrative war And so rather than have you answer that What I'd like to hear you describe as we come to a close is what is that Narrative is the thing at the center of the answer to that. if what Trump wants to tell everybody at the anniversary is This country has always been great and the people who are trying to take its greatness from you are the enemy. Yeah. what is the story that you want to see The people seeking justice tell. in return, the story that you think can build that power and change that country I don't think greatness is defined by who has the most powerful military. I don't think greatness is defined by who has the most money I don't think greatness is defined by Oh. has done the most innovation with regard to technology. It's not defined by who gets to the moon first or to Mars first. Those are all notable and laudable achievements But when I think about Human history And when I think about The human struggle Cvinced that greatness is defined by our capacity to love one another. our capacity to care for people we don't have to care for capacity to show mercy, our capacity to help those in need, our capacity to get beyond boundaries and borders that have either artificially or naturally limited us, our capacity unlock opportunities for those who have been unfairly bound and burdened That's greatness And so when I look at our history, the things that make me proud Are the things that people have done come. I actually think There's an American story that appreciates the underdog who does the great thing that no one thought they could do you know team that wins when nobody expected them to win person who dazzles when no one thought they had that ability, the person who you because they have a voice you didn't expect them to have, the person who surprises you because they can do things in an entertainment or an athletic space you didn't expect them to do. That's what creates wonder. That's what makes you appreciate glory of being a human, the beauty of being a human and nothing I think It reflects greatness more than our desire. to see that everywhere. and that opportunity given to everyone. you know, I just think the model of greatness that's about powerower and strength and the ability to threaten and intimidate it's a falsearrative the And the military power the nations that have been claimed to be the greatest nations because they had the most military power have all fallen. It's not a stable or sustainable space to occupy those who Diminish and deny and marginalize human relations, care, love Mercy, justice ose societies fall And I'd still like to believe that America's best days are in front of us. And when I roll my eyes when people say make America great again, it's not because I minimize Some of the things we've done in the past, I just have to believe there is something better waiting for us and I And I believe that. I really do. I think we are We' poised to do some things, but we're also threatened to go back we're going to have to win this struggle But yeah, I think for me, greatness is Creating a world where there's more love, where there's more hope, where there's more mercy, where there's more opportunity, where there's less sickness, where there's less poverty, where there's less despair where there's kind of U Joy. and Beauty. that I think we all crave And our government should facilitate An opportunity for more of that More of that beauty, more of that joy, more of that love not block people from understanding things that get in the way of joy and beauty and love like bigotry. and violence and hatred. and racial categorizations and hierarchy. To me, that's the greatness that I'm looking for. This is something that I thought walking through the sculptures It had to have been a choice to represent things that were that are so hard to bear, so hard to look in the son of their cruelty. Yeah. in ways that are so beautiful. Yeah N the way it's a very difficult place to move through. sits heavy at you and yet it is all you found or the artistser. Yeah. and the space you chose and the guard you created. I mean, there's one sculpture there of a child who's The slave child who is hurt his hand picking cotton and showing it to his mother. And there's coton real cotton ballls. I'll never forget how beautiful and sad that sculpture is But that choice to represents so much hardship and beauty me is very Yeah I mean, I guess it's just what I've learned from my work, I mean I've chosen to stand next to condemned people. Um who are going to be execute it. and you can ask yourself, why would you get close to something like that And what I've learned is that when you're cllose to the disfavored, the marginalized the condemned You sometimes have the ability to harness the power of love and grace and create something beautiful in the midst of something really ugly And those are the things that people hold on to. What inspires me the most representing the people I represent is to see their humanity, to see them say something, hear them say something or see them do something beautiful. And I just think if you understand that enslaved people had the capacity to show compassion and love to their children, youd begin to understand slavery differently. dont go to will benefited from slavery, you ended up better off than you were because you understand that They're not so different. And so yes, I think beauty is important. I mean, is You know, I've seen a lot of ugly, a lot of ugly. and you know, locking people up in cages and seeing some of the bigotry and the hostility that people have sometimes shown. I've gotten deathreats and there's a lot of ugly Oh the beauty. Oh the glory. I mean You know, the remarkable things that I get to see ammong condemned people, peopleople are in jails and prisons. Pe, we have an anti hunger program now. We're going into the black belelt. Alabama has one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the country And so we go into these communities, we support families who are food insecure, we give them Basically four hundred and fifteen dollars a month for six months, so they have some space to do some other things. And then we have a mobile grocery that goes into these rare really isolated areas and sell groceries that next to nothing and people come out And there is a love and an excitement and an appreciation. everybody on my staff is fighting to be on the team that goes out because it's just so energizing. And every now and then I'll talk to somebody and when You know, an older person pulls me aside and just says Thank you for doing this. and we allow people in the program to identify other people who should be in the program. So I'll say to some of the people in the program, you pick Three people in your community who you think needs this more than you. No relatives, but just pick three people and they'll take it so seriously And then they'll come back and say, well, these are the three people. And what this woman said to me is, she said, Mr. Stevenson, just because you're poor It doesn't mean that you don't want to be generous Just because you're poor, it doesn't mean you don't want to help other people And she's more grateful that we have allowed her in her words to be a philanthropist, then she is for the food. And for me There's a beauty in that, not just the material exchange But in understanding the heart of this human being who despite poverty wants to be generous And instead of just labeling and demonizing and marginalizing the poor, when we understand there's a desire in that community to be generous, we think differently about what it would mean to fight poverty And so yes, I think that beauty is really important without the beauty of comoming seegregation and Joan Crow, the beauty of overcoming the violence and menace of lynching and not hating everybody for that. The beauty of choosing America and citizenship and not retribution and revenge after emancipation It'd be hard to believe in this country. But when I experience that beauty and I see that beauty And I know that beauty doesn't have a racial boundary. It doesn't have an age boundary. It doesn't have a gender boundary. It doesn't have an identity boundary. is A human experience that we can all embrace, then I'm I'm motivated I'll end before ask in books. Okay. somethingomething you just said what it means to choose this country What it means to believe in the country. I know a lot of people Oh I to feel very alienated from the country over the past ten years first term and his second term and what he represents and the way he acts and the things he says. Is it hard for them to do so many of their countrymen chose him, chose him again Yeah they actually have done reckoning with parts of the country's past They maybe did not know that much about And that has been deeply overwhelming. Its a hard thing to hold And the mixture of the two and then the two hundred fiftieth coming when it does in the political moment it does. When I asked them, I said, do you Do you love the country? Would you say you believe in America? sort of pause and said, well, it's a hard moment So what to you does it mean to love America to believe in it to choose it. In some ways For me, at least, it's kind of the wrong question, Do you love America? It feels like question created