WEBVTT - Bryan Stevenson: Re-Righting History 0:00:05.200 --> 0:00:09.760 Hi Brian, Hi Katie, and hello listeners, wonderful listeners. The 0:00:09.840 --> 0:00:13.720 time has come. The first episode of my new documentary 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.639 series on nat Gio America, Inside Out, is out in 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.239 the world. For those of you who are interested, you 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:23.720 can watch it on National Geographic at ten pm for 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.080 the next several Wednesdays, or on the NATCHIO channel website, 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:32.959 which is channel dot National Geographic dot com. Full episodes 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:36.040 will also be available on who the day after they air, 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.400 or you can find them on YouTube and Facebook until 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:42.199 mid May. So get them while they're hot, people. You know, 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:45.600 I'm very excited about this series. I hope people will watch, 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:48.920 and more importantly, that there will be a springboard for 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:52.199 important conversations we just don't seem to be having in 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:54.880 this country, Katie. As we mentioned last week, the first 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:57.360 episode of the series is about how we approach the 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:00.440 history and the future of race in this country, a 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:04.480 pretty fraught topic. It includes the debate over the hundreds 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:08.959 of Confederate monuments around the country. The episode really uses 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:14.680 Confederate statues as a conversation starter because they stand for 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:18.920 so much and they're more than what they appear. If 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:22.520 you understand when they were put up and what they 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:27.120 symbolize to many people. It really broadens your understanding of 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:29.680 the issue of race and of history. And there are 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:32.720 more than six hundred and fifty of them throughout the country, 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:34.840 particularly in the South. You and I have talked about 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:38.360 this issue before in our podcast with New Orleans Mayor 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:42.160 Mitch Landrew. He was on the pod last June and 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.520 episode thirty three, and I highly recommend that show. He 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.480 was also in this episode of my Natio series. He 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:51.280 told me he got death threats after the New Orleans 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:54.520 City Council voted to remove four of those Confederate statues 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:57.120 in the city. And there's a pretty chilling thing he 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:00.240 told me in the documentary, Brian, Yeah, one scene in 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:04.080 the doc really jumped out at me. May Landrew said 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:06.280 that three of the statues were taken down at night 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:10.079 on the advice of security personnel, who basically said it's 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:13.000 harder to get shot by a sniper at night. It's 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:16.720 a very explosive issue, and as I said, it's about 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.400 much more than statues. It's about who we are, what 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:23.760 we stand for, what we believe in the history we've acknowledged. 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:27.600 So in this episode, I wanted to understand over one 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:30.120 hundred and fifty years after the Civil War? Why is 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:34.400 there so much intense emotion over these monuments? Which brings us, 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:37.600 of course, to today's guest, Brian Stevenson. Katie. I know 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:41.919 you're a very big fan, so huge fan. He's featured 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:44.400 in your nat GEO doc and for very good reason. 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.160 He spent his career fighting injustice in our legal system. 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:50.840 He's a lawyer who successfully argued cases in front of 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.880 the Supreme Court, and he's also head of the Equal 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:57.520 Justice Initiative down in Montgomery, Alabama, which is an organization 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:00.519 he founded as a young man. He's so written a 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:04.600 wonderful book called Just Mercy, which I highly recommend. And 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.359 we wanted to include Brian in the documentary and then 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:11.160 talk to him more today on the podcast because he 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:15.920 is really, among other things, making it his mission to 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:18.919 make sure there are things about our past that are 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:23.400 not swept under the rug, that are painful, things that 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:27.480 we all need to acknowledge before we're able to move forward. 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:30.880 I am thrilled that he is able to join us. 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.200 I've interviewed many people over the years, but he's been 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:38.600 a career highlight for me and I admire him deeply. 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:41.880 So we talked with Brian about America's history of slavery 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.920 and racial violence, about his own experiences with school segregation 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:49.200 as a child, and about the new museum and memorial 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:52.080 that he's helping to open later this month, and about 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.520 the purpose he really hopes that they serve in bringing 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:58.720 us together as a country. Absolutely, So we started by 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.040 asking him to tell us about the Equal Justice Initiative, 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:11.000 the organization he started building in We're a private, nonprofit 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:14.440 law office. It grew out of a desperate need in 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:18.159 Alabama to provide legal services to people on death row. 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.680 Alabama doesn't have a public defender system, and there were 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:26.039 nearly a hundred condemned prisoners literally dying for legal assistance 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:29.000 in the nineteen eighties, and so we started this project 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.800 to meet that need, and it's grown and expanded over 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:35.760 the last thirty years. We began working on other cases 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:41.159 involving wrongful convictions and unfair sentences. We started challenging the 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:44.480 problems of the poor in our legal system. I really 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:46.719 do believe we have a criminal justice system that treats 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:49.160 you better if you're rich and guilty then if you're 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:52.960 poor and innocent. We've grown, we we've done work on children. 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:55.440 We were working on behalf of the mentally ill. It's 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:58.720 been focused on criminal justice reform, and then about ten 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:01.240 years ago we began taking on these bigger projects of 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:04.800 race and poverty more broadly. And you've argued before the 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:07.640 Supreme Court on a number of occasions and really changed 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:12.080 our interpretation of the Constitution to protect particularly young people 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:15.400 who are charged with crimes and either sentence to the 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:19.280 death penalty or to life without parole. Yeah, I take 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:24.040 really seriously the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:27.279 It's a part of our constitution that isn't as developed 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:29.800 as I think it should be. And so yes, we 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:34.200 have been challenging what we perceived to be excessive punishment, 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:38.120 unfair sentencing uh in many of our states. And one 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:40.520 of those issues that took me to the Supreme Court 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:43.120 a couple of times is what we're doing to children. 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:46.880 The United States had three thousand children sentenced to die 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:50.200 in prison, some as young as thirteen years of age. 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:53.360 A life without parole sentence is a sentence that basically says, 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:55.640 you're never going to be safe, You're never going to 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:59.160 be uh, someone we can release. You're beyond hope you're 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:02.320 you're beyond ride emption, and I just think that's just 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:04.880 not true for any child. It may be that that 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:07.920 child doesn't get to the point where we can release them, 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:11.120 but to condemn them before they've evolved, before they've grown, 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:14.760 was for me fundamentally at odds with what we know 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:16.719 about children. It's the reason why we don't let them vote, 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:18.480 we don't let them smoke, we don't let them drink. 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:20.720 We know that there's a point that they haven't reached 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:24.120 yet to make those choices, but we weren't honoring that 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:26.880 in the criminal justice system, and so we took that 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:29.000 case of the court, and the Court has now banned 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.320 mandatory life without role sentences for children. We're trying to 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:35.400 still protect children in other ways. On any given day, 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:38.800 there are some ten thousand children housed in adult jails 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:41.440 in prisons, and those kids are at great risk of 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:44.000 sexual violence and abuse. And so we still have a 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:46.200 lot of work to do, but we have been pushing 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:50.520 hard to help particularly vulnerable communities in our criminal justice system. 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:54.039 In many ways you talk about mass incarceration, Brian is 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:58.000 sort of part of this long tail of history and 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:02.680 one of the byproducts of slavery and how it is 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:07.839 morphed into things like mass incarceration and the death penalty. 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:12.000 Can you explain that to our listeners? Sure. I think 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:14.720 we have a history of racial inequality in this country 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:17.920 that we've been largely silent about, and it makes us 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:24.240 indifferent uh to racial bias and racial discrimination. Today, the 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.800 Bureau of Justice predicts that one in three blackmail babies 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:29.720 born in this country is expected to go to jail 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:32.800 or prison. And that's not perceived as a crisis. It's 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:36.320 not a political issue. Elected officials aren't talking about it. 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:39.920 And I think the reason why we haven't responded to 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:42.080 that as a tragedy in the way that I think 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:45.440 we should is because we have been acculturated to just 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.040 accept a certain amount of racial bias, a certain amount 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:53.120 of racial disparity. And I think the legacy of our 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:56.400 history of racial inequality has compromised us. I really do 0:07:56.520 --> 0:08:00.760 think we are breathing in a kind of small kind 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:04.640 of pollution that has left us less healthy when it 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:08.360 comes to confronting bias and discrimination. And I actually believe 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:13.560 it begins with the genocide of Native Americans. We are 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:18.080 a post genocide society when Native people came when Europeans 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:21.080 came to this continent, we killed millions of Native people. 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:23.280 It was a genocide, but we didn't call it that. 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:26.920 We said these Native people are different. We said Native 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:30.600 people were savages, and through that language we were comfortable 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:33.920 with removing them from their lands and killing them by 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:36.400 the millions. It was that same narrative that made us 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:41.120 comfortable with enslaving Black Africans. And I don't think that 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:44.800 the great evil of American slavery was involuntary servitude of 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:47.720 forced labor. I think it was this narrative of racial 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:52.680 racial difference, this ideology of white supremacy, and we never 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:54.679 dealt with that. If you read the thirteenth Amendment, it 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:59.520 talks about ending forced labor, involuntary servitude, but it doesn't 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:02.840 say anything about ending this narrative of racial difference. And 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.000 because of that, I've argued that slavery didn't end in 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:09.520 eighteen sixty five. It just evolved, and that created this 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:14.000 era of racial terrorism. And from the eighteen seventies until 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.040 the nineteen fifties, thousands of black people were pulled out 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:19.080 of their homes. They were drowned, they were beaten, they 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:22.360 were hanged, they were burned, they were tortured, sometimes literally 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.560 on the courthouse lawn in front of thousands who cheered, 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:29.720 and that spectacle violence, that terrorism was something we didn't 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:33.400 really confront And then we moved from that era uh 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:36.600 into the civil rights era, and we celebrate the civil 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.480 rights activism of Dr King and Rosa Parks, but we 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:44.440 don't talk about the deep commitment to resisting integration to 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:48.120 all of those elect officials who were preaching segregation, forever, 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:52.199 segregation or war. Even though we want passage of the 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:55.400 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, that narrative 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:59.000 of racial difference persisted, and today we live at a 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:01.160 time where that narrative is still alive. There is a 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:04.920 presumption of dangerousness and guilt that gets assigned to black 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.640 and brown people, which is why mass incarceration and the 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:13.680 modern criminal justice system reflects this continuing legacy. It's the 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.160 reason why black and brown people feel so menaced and 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:19.439 targeted by the police, why there's anger and frustration when 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:21.880 unarmed people of color are killed by the police. And 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:25.400 I don't think we can understand these issues without understanding 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:28.880 this historical legacy. I know you believe, Brian, as I 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:32.560 do that we can't really make progress. We can't even 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:37.679 begin to have conversations about some of these issues if 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:41.640 we don't acknowledge that they happened. So let's talk about 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:45.040 the ways you're doing that with the opening this month 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:48.600 in April of the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:51.720 for Peace and Justice. So let's just talk about those 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:55.880 two projects and and why they're so important. First, let's 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:59.320 talk about the Lynching project. How did that start? Why 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:01.400 did you want to you that? And what was that 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:04.880 like putting it together? Well, first of all, thank you 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:08.439 for that, um, that question, Katie, and and that reflection. 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:10.880 I do agree that we have some work to do 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:13.720 in this country to make our history more evident, to 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:18.360 make it understood. And um, the work we started doing 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.320 on lynching was in response to that. UM. I live 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:25.760 in a region where thousands of black people were brutalized, 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:29.840 were tortured, uh, and we haven't acknowledged that history. It 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:33.400 was terrorism. And older people of color come up to 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:35.880 me sometimes and they say, Mr Stevenson, I get angry 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:38.720 when I hear somebody on TV talking about how we're 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:40.920 dealing with domestic terrorism for the first time in our 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:44.000 nation's history. After nine eleven. They said, we grew up 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:45.599 with terror. We had to wear about being bombed and 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:48.400 lynched and menaced every day of our lives, and that 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:53.320 legacy isn't something we've confronted or discussed. The black people 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:55.800 in Chicago and Cleveland and Detroit didn't go to those 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:59.640 communities as immigrants looking for new economic opportunities. They went 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:03.320 to those communities as refugees and exiles from terror in 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:06.479 the American South. And so we wanted to first document 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:11.119 this history. So we spent five years combing through archives 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:15.480 gathering evidence about lynchings. We identified about eight hundred more 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:19.880 lynchings than prior researchers had uncovered, and we put out 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:23.680 a report. And then we wanted to make this research 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:29.840 accessible to people in public spaces and visible exactly, and 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:33.400 so we started putting up markers at lynching sites. And 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:36.600 then we had this idea of involving more people, of 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:39.480 inviting community groups and members to go to lynching sites, 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:43.200 to collect soil at the lynching site, to put it 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:46.000 in a jar with the name of a lynching victim 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:48.400 and the date of the lynching, and then to make 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:54.600 a reflection. And we've now collected hundreds of jars of 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:58.720 soil from lynching sites, and black people and white people 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:01.360 and young people in old people have played a role 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:05.600 in creating a new visual of what this history represents. 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.360 And you saw the exhibit in our office, a wall 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:10.920 full of jars. Oh my gosh, it's so it's just 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:16.920 extrat They're so unbelievably moving in their simplicity. And you 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:21.000 can see the different soil from different regions of Alabama 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:24.680 and other Southern states, which in many ways I know 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:28.320 I wrote about this in National Geographic. Each jar tells 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:31.319 a story, not only a story of a human being, 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:36.160 but a story of the circumstances or where this happened. 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:40.440 And some of these stories are so moving. There's one 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:42.920 that I keep thinking about, Brian, that you told me 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:48.600 about about a school teacher who who scolded some some boys. 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:51.800 Can you explain that story for us? Sure? No, I 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:55.080 think the stories are really important. Katie and Elizabeth Lawrence 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:58.600 was a Birmingham school teacher working with black children because 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:00.600 of course the schools were segregated it and she was 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:04.120 walking home one night when a group of white kids 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.400 began throwing stones at her, and she did what any 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.280 responsible adult would do. She turned to the children and said, 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.960 don't throw stones at people. And the children went home 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:18.120 and told their parents that this black woman had scolded them. 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:20.840 And the parents were offended at the idea that a 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:24.280 black person would correct their children, and so they organized 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:26.760 a mob. They went to the home of Elizabeth Lawrence 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:30.760 and they lynched her. Uh Brian, didn't they burn her 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.920 house down? To Yes, when her son tried to uh 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:37.800 complain about it, they burned her house down. They ran 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:41.680 him out of the state. He fled to Boston. And 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:44.640 the pain of these kinds of events, which happened all 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:47.800 the time, is all of the students of Elizabeth Lawrence, 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:50.120 all of the neighbors, all of the black people who 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:53.360 looked up to her and respected her and admired her 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:56.480 and loved her for trying to educate their children, they 0:14:56.520 --> 0:15:00.520 were required to be silent about the violent that took 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:03.600 her life, because if you complained about lynching, then you 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:07.200 would be targeted. I think also people think that lynching 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:10.960 automatically means someone is hung from a tree, because that 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:15.720 symbol has been so emblazoned in our consciousness. But in 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:19.520 this case, they just brutally beat her. Yes, that's right. 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:24.240 Many lynchings involved beating someone to death. We have accounts 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:27.560 of lynchings where people were burned at the stake, We 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:31.040 have accounts where people were drowned. We have accounts of 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:35.520 people who were shot, sometimes hundreds of times by a 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:38.800 crowd of a thousand. Well, and crowd is a really 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.680 interesting point, because these things didn't happen, you know, with 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:46.680 a few guys gathered around in secret. Often these lynchings 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:50.120 occurred in the town square with hundreds or even thousands 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:55.520 of people watching. And how did good people allow this 0:15:55.760 --> 0:16:00.960 to go on for decade after decade after decade. Yeah, 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:04.040 it's a really important question, Brian. I think the thing 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:08.360 that really pained me about this era is that this 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.960 violence wasn't conducted by the clan and the cover of night, 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:17.320 with people wearing hoods. People would actually pose in photographs 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:20.480 next to the battered body that they had killed. They 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:24.040 were proud to be participating in this kind of terror 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:27.280 and violence. They would bring their children. We have photographs 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:30.560 where you see little children being held up by their 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:34.200 parents so they can see this person burning to death 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:39.000 or hanging. And this culture of violence was celebrated. Uh, 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:41.680 And that is I think one of the reasons why 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:45.960 we are very intentional about characterizing this as terrorism. They 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:49.560 weren't just killing individuals. They were sending a message to 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:53.400 African Americans throughout the region that if you challenge the 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:57.240 racial order, if you fight for your rights, we will 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:00.600 brutalize you. They would sometimes leave these by these hanging 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:03.600 for days, not allow the family to come and gather 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:06.399 the body, because they wanted the entire black community to 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:10.560 know what had happened. And the documentation of this violence, 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:14.240 the photographs, the postcards that would be sent around, was 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:18.080 a way of spreading the terror, spreading the message that 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:21.400 if you resist our racial order, we will kill you. 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:23.119 You couldn't get black people to drink out of the 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:25.720 Colored fountain unless there was a threat of violence, and 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:29.119 lynching became the threat that allowed Jim Crow to grow. 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:31.840 And it was so so disgraceful, you know you. I 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:35.560 featured one of those photos in this Hour. I did, 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:38.800 And when I thought about it, how they were shared 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:43.160 and passed around and celebrated, I thought of it almost 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:48.280 as a disgusting, perverse precursor to a weird kind of 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:52.960 social media that galvanized a group of people and kind 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:57.160 of kept them as one in their hatred and brutality. 0:17:57.520 --> 0:18:00.960 That's right, and I think what it did was to 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:04.640 create a culture where it is okay to victimize these 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:07.600 black people. It is okay to see them brutalize, it's 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:10.440 okay to torture them. They're not the same as us, 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:14.560 They're not human like us. And everyone was complicit. You 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:17.000 didn't have to be in the photograph, you didn't have 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:21.280 to be in the mob to be responsible. Elected officials 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:24.960 look the other way. The federal government looked the other way, 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:27.760 which is why this was a national phenomena. We had 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:30.720 the resources to go to world, to Germany and fight 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:32.719 in World War One. We had the resources to go 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:35.879 to Europe and fighting World War Two. We had the 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:38.639 resources to keep people safe from this kind of violence, 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:41.400 but we were unwilling to do it. And no one 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:46.160 ever got prosecuted, you know, I mean, for for participating 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:49.760 in these kinds of crimes, which is infuriating. But what 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:53.080 I think is beautiful about this exhibit. I mean, it's 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:56.199 so it's so painful, but there's a certain amount of 0:18:56.240 --> 0:19:02.480 beauty in validating and recognize seeing the people who never 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:07.880 had a proper burial, whose lives were never celebrated who 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:11.320 whose stories were never told. I think that's right. I mean, 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:15.520 I've been especially moved to name these unnamed victims of 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:20.440 terror and violence, to give them a space somewhere where 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:25.920 people can recognize the tragedy of their loss. And that's 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:28.280 been the heart of the reflections that community members have 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:31.000 shared when they do these, and I've been really moved 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:32.320 by it. We you know, we had a woman go 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:34.359 to a lynching site by herself. It was on a 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:36.359 dirt road in the middle of a rural county, and 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:39.359 she was very nervous about it, a middle aged black woman, 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:42.679 and she kept telling us, I don't know if I 0:19:42.680 --> 0:19:44.359 should do this, and we said, well, it's up to you, 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:46.280 and she said, I'm going to go. And we tell 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:48.520 people you don't have to explain to anyone what you're doing. 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:52.200 If you feel uncomfortable telling them that you're getting soiled 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:54.399 because of a lynching, you can just make up something. 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:56.520 And she said, she was on this road and a 0:19:56.520 --> 0:19:59.120 truck kept driving back and forth, and a white man 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:01.919 in this pickup truck kept slowing down and staring at her, 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.160 and she was getting very nervous and worried that this 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:06.639 man was going to do something and find me. The 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.520 truck stopped and this large white man got out of 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:13.040 the truck and walked over to her, and he asked 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:15.359 her what she was doing. And she had planned to say, 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:17.760 I'm just getting some dirt from my garden, but there 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:21.960 was something about the way he asked that just emboldened her. 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:24.320 And she said, I'm digging soil because this is where 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:27.560 a man was lynched. And she had the memo that 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:30.919 we gave each of our our volunteers that described the lynching. 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:34.040 And the man said, is that paper talk about that lynching? 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:36.239 She said it does. He said, can I read it? 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:38.760 And he picked up the paper and started reading it. 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:41.400 She said she was trying to finish her collection because 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:43.679 she was so nervous. And then she said, after the 0:20:43.680 --> 0:20:47.639 man read the paper, he put it down and he said, 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:50.800 would you mind if I helped you dig? And this 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:53.560 man got on the soil and began digging with his 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:56.679 hand and helping her fill the jar. And at the 0:20:56.800 --> 0:21:00.480 end they took a picture together, and she said, I 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:04.159 would have never expected anything like that to happen, but 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:08.480 I feel empowered. I feel energized that we can do 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:11.960 things to tell the truth about our past and find 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:14.240 our way forward. We use soil because I think soil 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:18.679 is a really powerful medium for confronting history. Buried in 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:22.240 that soil is the sweat of all of those enslaved 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:26.600 black people who populated this region. Buried in that soil 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:28.760 is the blood of those who were lynched and murdered. 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:31.560 Buried in that soil are the tears of those who 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:35.399 were humiliated during Jim Crow and segregation. But also in 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:38.320 that soil is the potential for life. We can plant things, 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:41.440 we can grow things that are healthier, that are capable 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:44.879 of nurturing a new day. We can't do that if 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:47.720 we don't talk about our past. And that's why these 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:50.560 projects for me have been really exciting. I'm committed to 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:53.800 truth and reconciliation. I just believe that truth and reconciliation 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:56.359 is sequential. So to first tell the truth before we 0:21:56.400 --> 0:21:59.560 can have reconciliation. This is why I say Brian Stevenson 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:03.440 for Press is it in. I mean, honestly all the time. 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:08.560 We're gonna take a quick break and we'll be back 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:20.800 in a moment with Brian Stephenson. And now back with 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:26.399 Brian Stevenson. I think a lot of people who haven't 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:29.960 read your book or which is amazing recommended reading Just 0:22:30.200 --> 0:22:33.119 Mercy Everyone, or didn't watch your Ted talk, both of 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:35.680 which I highly recommend. Um want to know a little 0:22:35.720 --> 0:22:38.399 bit more about your own personal story, and so I 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:40.200 wondered if you could just share a little bit about 0:22:40.600 --> 0:22:43.680 growing up in Delaware. I know your great grandparents were 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:49.400 actually slaves, how you experienced school desegregation personally, even though 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:52.560 you're you're not such an old guy. Um, just can 0:22:52.600 --> 0:22:54.720 you tell us a little bit about what informed the 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:58.680 work that you're doing now? Sure? Yeah. The line between 0:22:58.680 --> 0:23:03.840 me and my enslaved great grandfather is pretty short. My 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:07.280 my great grandfather was born in slavery. My grandmother, who 0:23:07.320 --> 0:23:10.239 was born in the eighteen eighties, spent a lot of 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:12.399 time with me, and she was in my ear constantly 0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:15.680 talking about the stories her father would tell her about 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:18.480