Speaker 1: Next Question with Katie Curic is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Katie Kuric Media. Hi everyone, I'm Katie
Speaker 1: Curic and welcome to Next Question Today civil rights lawyer
Speaker 1: and activist Brian Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative. If
Speaker 1: I've had any impact as a lawyer, if I've helped
Speaker 1: anybody during my legal career, if I've made a difference
Speaker 1: of representing my clients, it's not because I'm hard working,
Speaker 1: it's not because I'm smart or anything like that. It's
Speaker 1: because I got proximate to a condemned man and heard
Speaker 1: him sing about higher ground. And that's why I talked
Speaker 1: about proximity, because I think there's power when we get
Speaker 1: close to the poor and excluded in the condemned. There's knowledge,
Speaker 1: there's wisdom, there's insight, there's inspiration, there are portals that
Speaker 1: can change the world. And later I'll speak with the
Speaker 1: man who plays Brian in the new movie Just Mercy,
Speaker 1: Michael b Jordan's and Jamie Fox, who portrays the client
Speaker 1: whose case put Brian Stevenson on the map. Brian Stevenson
Speaker 1: has been fighting this fight in the shadows for years,
Speaker 1: so that's why this movie is so important. My next question,
Speaker 1: what made the real Brian Stevenson the man he is today.
Speaker 1: I recently had the privilege of interviewing Brian, one of
Speaker 1: my personal heroes, at a dinner for the Aspen Institute
Speaker 1: in New York City. Hi, everyone, good evening, It's such
Speaker 1: an I began by asking him about his childhood. He
Speaker 1: grew up in a small rural town in southern Delaware, poor,
Speaker 1: isolated and marginalized, but surrounded by family that taught him
Speaker 1: the values that have guided him his entire life. I
Speaker 1: was born at the end of the Jim Crow era,
Speaker 1: but you could still see the signs that said white
Speaker 1: and color. And I watched my parents trying to shield
Speaker 1: me from that. I mean, we don't realize that that
Speaker 1: signage wasn't They weren't directions, They were actually assaults. They
Speaker 1: created real injuries. My parents were humiliated every day of
Speaker 1: their lives, and yet they had enough hope that they
Speaker 1: actually believed that they could raise us to enter a
Speaker 1: world that would be better and more just. And I
Speaker 1: think it was that sense that you have to believe
Speaker 1: things you haven't seen that I was constantly being taught.
Speaker 1: You know, I was a young person and I became
Speaker 1: a church musician, and when I first started to play,
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't want me to play during the services.
Speaker 1: I had to play during the testimonial and people would
Speaker 1: come in and they'd give their testimonies, and sometimes they'd
Speaker 1: say these heartbreaking they tell these heartbreaking stories about what
Speaker 1: had happened. They didn't have a food to feed their family,
Speaker 1: or something had happened and something terrible. But during those
Speaker 1: testimony services, they would always in their testimony by starting
Speaker 1: to sing a song. They'd start singing something like wouldn't
Speaker 1: take nothing for my journey now, And there was this
Speaker 1: hopefulness And I think for me, that has been the
Speaker 1: greatest gift. I live in Montgomery, Alabama now, and I
Speaker 1: think about the people who were there sixty years ago
Speaker 1: trying to do what I do, and I realized I'm
Speaker 1: standing on their shoulders, and they did so much more,
Speaker 1: so much less. One of the people who did so
Speaker 1: much more was so much less was Brian's grandmother, a
Speaker 1: woman who was born in the eighteen eighties in Virginia,
Speaker 1: who had ten children and was the matriarch of the family.
Speaker 1: She was tough and strong, but Brian says her love
Speaker 1: was so expansive that she had a way of making
Speaker 1: each of her grandchildren feel special and seen. My grandmother
Speaker 1: was the daughter of people who were enslaved. Her parents
Speaker 1: were born in slavery. My great grandfather learned to read
Speaker 1: as an enslaved person, even though he knew he might
Speaker 1: be sold or even injured, because he had that skill.
Speaker 1: And she would talk about how when emancipation came, all
Speaker 1: of the uh formerly enslaved people would come to their
Speaker 1: house and he would read the newspaper every night, and
Speaker 1: she would sit next to him, and she would be
Speaker 1: so proud that he had that ability. And even though
Speaker 1: she couldn't go to school, she learned to read, and
Speaker 1: she taught her daughter, my mom, how to read. And
Speaker 1: we were poor and we didn't always have the things
Speaker 1: that we needed. But my mother went into debt to
Speaker 1: buy the World Book Encyclopedia because she wanted us to
Speaker 1: have this entry into the world. And when you see
Speaker 1: people making those kinds of sacrifices, affirming those kinds of values,
Speaker 1: it sustained you. It energizes you. And then the last thing,
Speaker 1: my my, I feel really fortunate to have been given
Speaker 1: was a commitment to loving people. My my, my grandmother
Speaker 1: told me, always stay on the side of love, even
Speaker 1: when people treat you bad, even when people hate you,
Speaker 1: even when people mistreat you. You have to stay on
Speaker 1: the side of love because once you leave the side
Speaker 1: of love, you give away the most important parts of yourself.
Speaker 1: You become vulnerable to all of those emotions that will
Speaker 1: destroy you. So you have to stay on the side
Speaker 1: of love. My people, my parents, my grandparents, despite the
Speaker 1: brutality and the mistreatment, didn't hate anybody. And it's a
Speaker 1: precious gift that they have given me. And I've tried
Speaker 1: to hold on to that gift, and it's the gift
Speaker 1: I want to give to my clients and the people
Speaker 1: I work with, and it has very much centered the
Speaker 1: work that I've done throughout my career. So both hope
Speaker 1: and love, hope and law. Yeah, and you would think
Speaker 1: that a little eight year old Brian Stevenson knew he
Speaker 1: wanted to be a public interest lawyer, you know, but
Speaker 1: you didn't actually figure that out for quite a while.
Speaker 1: You went to Harvard Law School, but you weren't particularly
Speaker 1: jazzed about going and once you got there, you really
Speaker 1: felt like an outsider. So at what point did you
Speaker 1: feel like this is my calling, this is where I'm
Speaker 1: going to commit my time and energy. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it was funny. I was so excited because nobody in
Speaker 1: my family had gone to college. I was so excited
Speaker 1: just to be in college, and I didn't think much
Speaker 1: about what came next. And I was a philosophy major.
Speaker 1: And it was really at the beginning of my senior
Speaker 1: year that somebody came up to me and said, you know,
Speaker 1: nobody is going to pay you to philosophize when you
Speaker 1: graduated from college. And to be honest, that's how I
Speaker 1: found my way to law school. It was very clear
Speaker 1: to me, you don't need to know anything to go
Speaker 1: to law school, you know. Uh, And so I signed
Speaker 1: up for that. But I didn't have a real appreciation
Speaker 1: of what lawyers did. I didn't I'd never met a
Speaker 1: lawyer until I got to law school. And it was
Speaker 1: very disoriented because I was concerned about racial inequality and
Speaker 1: social injustice, and it just didn't feel connected to the
Speaker 1: things I cared about, and I was really in the
Speaker 1: middle of this kind of existential angst. Everything changed in
Speaker 1: when Brian took a course that required him to spend
Speaker 1: a month with a human rights organization providing legal services
Speaker 1: to people on death row. He headed down to Atlanta
Speaker 1: and into the prison system, and it was that experience
Speaker 1: that really became transformative. I I went to death row,
Speaker 1: I met people literally dying for legal assistance, and I
Speaker 1: write about this in my book. The first person I
Speaker 1: met was this condemned man. I had just been sent
Speaker 1: down there to tell him that he wasn't at risk
Speaker 1: of execution. And when this man came into the room,
Speaker 1: he was burdened with change. He had handcuffs on his wrist,
Speaker 1: he had a chain around his waist, he had shackles
Speaker 1: on his ankles, and by the time they unchained him,
Speaker 1: I was so nervous. I just started apologizing and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I'm just a law student. I don't
Speaker 1: know anything about the death mod And I finally said,
Speaker 1: but I'm here because you're not at risk of execution
Speaker 1: any time in the next year. And he was so
Speaker 1: stunned by that statement. He said, wait, say that again.
Speaker 1: And I said, you're not at risk of execution any
Speaker 1: time in the next year. And then he said, wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: say that again. I said, you're not at risk of
Speaker 1: execution any time in the next year. And this man
Speaker 1: grabbed my hands and he said, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. Said, you are the first person I've met
Speaker 1: in the two years i've been on death row who's
Speaker 1: not a death row prisoner or a death row guard.
Speaker 1: He said, I've been talking to my wife and my kids,
Speaker 1: but I haven't let them come and visit because I
Speaker 1: was afraid i'd have an execution date. He said, now,
Speaker 1: because of you, I'm going to see my wife. I'm
Speaker 1: going to see my kids. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't believe how, even in my ignorance, being
Speaker 1: proximate to that man was so transformative. And we started talking.
Speaker 1: And one hour turned into two hours, and two hours
Speaker 1: turned into three hours, and the guards were waiting for
Speaker 1: me to finish, and they got angry that I didn't
Speaker 1: finish the visit after an hour, and they came bursting
Speaker 1: into the room and they couldn't do anything to me,
Speaker 1: but they were mad. And they threw this man against
Speaker 1: the wall and they pulled his arms back and they
Speaker 1: put the handcuffs on his wrist so tightly I could
Speaker 1: see the metal pinching his skin. They wrapped the chain
Speaker 1: around his waist. They put the shackles on his ankles.
Speaker 1: They were treating him so roughly, and I begged them
Speaker 1: to be gentler, but they ignored me, and they pushed
Speaker 1: the man near the door. And when he got near
Speaker 1: the door, I saw this condemnment planted his feet. And
Speaker 1: when he planted his feet and the guards tried to
Speaker 1: shove him, he didn't move. And that's when this man
Speaker 1: looked at me and he said, Brian, don't you worry
Speaker 1: about this, You just come back. And then that man
Speaker 1: did something I've never forgotten. He stood there and he
Speaker 1: closed his eyes and he threw his head back and
Speaker 1: he started to sing, and he started singing as hymn
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard. He started singing, I'm pressing on the
Speaker 1: upward way, new heights, time gaining every day, still praying
Speaker 1: as I'm onward bound. And then he said, Lord, plant
Speaker 1: my feet on higher ground. And everybody stopped. The guards recovered.
Speaker 1: They started pushing him down the hall way, and you
Speaker 1: could hear the change claiming, but you could hear this
Speaker 1: man singing about higher ground. And when I heard that
Speaker 1: man sing, everything changed for me. That was the moment
Speaker 1: that I knew I wanted to help condemned people get
Speaker 1: to higher ground. But more than that, I knew that
Speaker 1: my journey to higher ground was tied to his. And
Speaker 1: I went back to Harvard Law School completely radicalized. You
Speaker 1: couldn't get me out of the law school library. I
Speaker 1: needed to know everything about federalism and comedy and the
Speaker 1: doctor in the jurisprudence. And that's how it happened for me.
Speaker 1: I went to death Row and I met a condemned
Speaker 1: man and he sang to me, and it changed my orientation,
Speaker 1: It changed my path, it changed my life. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about Just Mercy just for a moment, because it's coming
Speaker 1: out on December, and of course that is the case
Speaker 1: at the center of the your two thousand fourteen book,
Speaker 1: when you defended Walter McMillan played I think so incredibly.
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to see the film Jamie Fox,
Speaker 1: and I thought he did an amazing job. Michael B.
Speaker 1: Jordan of course plays you. How weird was that to
Speaker 1: watch that? It's pretty weird? Um, you know, I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm really I feel really good about the film. I
Speaker 1: was very apprehensive because Hollywood oftentimes will take a story
Speaker 1: and they'll do something formulaic, and I didn't want that
Speaker 1: to happen. But Michael B who's a producer on the film,
Speaker 1: was really committed to doing it right. The director, Deston
Speaker 1: Creton was also committed, and the whole cast came together
Speaker 1: and we're really committed to doing this in a way
Speaker 1: that would honor the people that I've represented. And they
Speaker 1: really put their heart into it, and I feel really
Speaker 1: good about the film. Why are you doing this? Why
Speaker 1: am my lawyer? I don't know why? As you lowering
Speaker 1: it down here in Alabama taking these cases that ain't
Speaker 1: nobody gonna pay you for. When I was a teenager,
Speaker 1: my grandfather was murdering over a black and white TV.
Speaker 1: We kept waiting for someone to show up to help.
Speaker 1: And that's when I realized that outside my community, nobody
Speaker 1: cared because to them, he's just another black man killed
Speaker 1: in the projects. I know what it's like to be
Speaker 1: in the shadows. It is surreal, uh, to to have
Speaker 1: a film come out and and and Michael B is
Speaker 1: obviously so so popular and so wonderful, and and he
Speaker 1: was very committed. We spent a lot of time together
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to do everything he could to
Speaker 1: get it right. And he asked me, is that, Is
Speaker 1: there anything I need to do to kind of get ready?
Speaker 1: I said, no, you've got it. I said, there's just
Speaker 1: one thing you don't need to do. And I told
Speaker 1: him the one thing you don't need to do is
Speaker 1: to lose the black panther creed body when you play me. Uh. Uh,
Speaker 1: you should keep don't go on a lawyer diet, don't
Speaker 1: try to you know. Uh and so uh and so
Speaker 1: I appreciate him holding on to all of those assets
Speaker 1: that he brings his other roles. Uh. But no, it's
Speaker 1: it's been great and I'm really excited for people to
Speaker 1: see the film, and for me, it's just a way
Speaker 1: of getting people exposed to these issues. I've always believed
Speaker 1: that if people saw what I see on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: they would respond the same way. And I when you
Speaker 1: see unfairness and abuse in this conduct, people have an
Speaker 1: instinct to respond to that. We just have not been
Speaker 1: exposed to it, and I hope the film changes that.
Speaker 1: It is a case study and persistence. When you represented
Speaker 1: Walter McMillan, I mean it was years of injustice that
Speaker 1: he had to deal with, and and of all places, Monroeville, Alabama,
Speaker 1: the birth where Harperle and Truman Capode grew up. Of course,
Speaker 1: the setting for To Kill a mocking Bird that must
Speaker 1: have been strange too. It is and I think one
Speaker 1: of the reason why I focused on that case in
Speaker 1: the book because I do think there's an irony in
Speaker 1: the way we tell stories about who we are, and
Speaker 1: there's a disconnect. And people love the story of To
Speaker 1: Kill a mocking it's a beautiful book, and yet and yet, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a truth that we haven't dealt with. You know,
Speaker 1: the character in that story, Tom Robinson, dies of hopelessness.
Speaker 1: He doesn't get justice. And we probably have about two
Speaker 1: hundred awards in this country that are named after the
Speaker 1: fictional lawyer Atticus Finch. And the question becomes, what are
Speaker 1: we celebrating because we didn't achieve justice for the poor,
Speaker 1: We didn't achieve justice for the person who was condemned.
Speaker 1: And it's not enough to just try in a world
Speaker 1: where justice requires something more. And I think that's the disconnect.
Speaker 1: And when I went to Monroeville and started working on
Speaker 1: this case, everybody would say, oh, have you been to
Speaker 1: the Killa mocking Bird Museum? And I would say, well, no,
Speaker 1: I haven't had time because I'm representing this innocent black
Speaker 1: man who's been wrongly convicted in this facing execution and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to help him. And they said, well, you
Speaker 1: need to go to the Dikilamdian Bird Museum. And we
Speaker 1: have romanticized that story. While we have tolerated a criminal
Speaker 1: justice system that treats you better if you're rich and
Speaker 1: guilty then if you're poor and innocent, we have tolerated
Speaker 1: racial bias, while we have celebrated this fictional characters resistance
Speaker 1: to some of that bias, but not their effectiveness and
Speaker 1: confern that bias and breaking down that kind of romanticized
Speaker 1: narrative and actually engaging with the actual story for me
Speaker 1: has been really important because we won't get to justice
Speaker 1: if we live in this fantasy world, in this romanticized
Speaker 1: world that is so evident in many places in this country.
Speaker 1: When we come back the actual story of Walter McMillan,
Speaker 1: as told in the new film Just Mercy, we'll talk
Speaker 1: with Jamie Fox and Michael B. Jordan's. The movie Just
Speaker 1: Mercy is based on Brian Stephenson's memoir. It tells the
Speaker 1: story of a black man in Alabama named Walter McMillan,
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted of killing a white woman he didn't know
Speaker 1: in a town he'd never been to. Despite the egregious
Speaker 1: lack of evidence, in McMillan was sentenced to death risk
Speaker 1: one from Harp. You don't know what it is, and
Speaker 1: you're guilty from the moment you're borne. And you can
Speaker 1: buddy up with these white folks and make him laugh
Speaker 1: and try to make him like you whatever that is,
Speaker 1: and he say, yes, no man, But when it's your turn,
Speaker 1: they ain't got to have no fingerprints, no where evidence
Speaker 1: and all the witness that God the whole thing up,
Speaker 1: and none of that matter. When all y'all think is
Speaker 1: is that look like a man who could kill somebody.
Speaker 1: Walter McMillan is played by Jamie Fox. It's so familiar
Speaker 1: because as as black man, the perception of us is, yeah,
Speaker 1: he probably did it so easily. He's put on death
Speaker 1: row with no trial. And there he sits in a
Speaker 1: hopeless place because I visited death row before for another movie,
Speaker 1: and the worst thing you can give a person and
Speaker 1: death row is is hope. And there he sits, and
Speaker 1: as he sits, all of a sudden, he doesn't know
Speaker 1: it at the time, but his Angel walks in and
Speaker 1: as Brian Stevenson, played wonderfully by Michael B. Jordan in
Speaker 1: the movie and Uh, they set out to do something remarkable.
Speaker 1: Michael B. Jordan not only plays Brian Stevenson, the lawyer
Speaker 1: who successfully overturned Walter McMillan's death sentence, but he's also
Speaker 1: a producer on the film and had a big hand
Speaker 1: in getting it financed. As a black man in America,
Speaker 1: I thought it was really important to be involved at
Speaker 1: the story. Learning about Brian Stevenson at such a late age,
Speaker 1: I felt I was shocked that he wasn't more of
Speaker 1: a household name. When I found out about his work,
Speaker 1: had a chance to listening and watch his ted talk,
Speaker 1: read his memoir, I was blown away by the work
Speaker 1: that he was doing behind closed doors without any real
Speaker 1: true support. So I felt like I could lend myself
Speaker 1: my platform, my medium to help telling the story and
Speaker 1: getting his story out to the masses. The first time
Speaker 1: I visited Death Row, I wasn't expecting to meet somebody
Speaker 1: the same age as me, grew up on the same
Speaker 1: music from a neighborhood just like ours. Could have been
Speaker 1: me mama, but stepping into the role of his real
Speaker 1: life hero Brian Stevenson, who's also soft spoken and restrained,
Speaker 1: took a different set of acting skills for the Black
Speaker 1: Panther star. I think emotionally, the positions that Brian Stephen
Speaker 1: has been in throughout this movie, throughout his his time
Speaker 1: as being a defense attorney, you know, especially in the the
Speaker 1: Deep South, the obstacles he had to encounter, I naturally
Speaker 1: would have reacted much different. So to know that he
Speaker 1: is such a reserved person that he did take his
Speaker 1: pride and his ego and put it to the side
Speaker 1: for the betterment of his clients. Knowing that, you know him,
Speaker 1: emotionally reacting wouldn't wouldn't get anything done in that type
Speaker 1: of way. So he's so strategic and it's so so
Speaker 1: methodical and how he moves Uh. You know, it was
Speaker 1: a challenge to go again sometimes your natural reaction at
Speaker 1: the things uh and uh and and and play a
Speaker 1: more reserved and right And you're right. He did it
Speaker 1: because he knew that was the means to the end
Speaker 1: he wanted to achieve. Meanwhile, how did Michael convince you
Speaker 1: or did did it take any convincing? It was no convincing.
Speaker 1: I've known Mike for for a long time. His mentor
Speaker 1: I've watched and grow up. So I was humble and
Speaker 1: honored to get that call from him. And there was
Speaker 1: some personal things that we talked about. But the one
Speaker 1: thing that I could tell you that in our business
Speaker 1: is hard to find people that stand up people. And
Speaker 1: he says, I want you to be in this film,
Speaker 1: And basically he was giving my u my artistic integrity
Speaker 1: back in a sense, and and I said, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: in with both feet because I think, what what what
Speaker 1: What I'll say about Michael b is that it's the
Speaker 1: biggest start in the world and he could do anything
Speaker 1: he wants to. But I think what was amazing, what
Speaker 1: is amazing about his career is when he laid the
Speaker 1: DNA of narratives like this in Fruitvale Station, where he
Speaker 1: took all of our hearts and uh and emotions and
Speaker 1: and just and just wild us. And then to take
Speaker 1: that same narrative to the biggest movie ever, uh, Black Panther,
Speaker 1: where he plays kill Monger, which is supposedly the villain.
Speaker 1: But if you listen to what he was saying, even
Speaker 1: as a villain, his narrative for us on the biggest stage,
Speaker 1: We're still talking about our culture and what we needed.
Speaker 1: So now, to me, this completes an artistic sentence of
Speaker 1: many paragraphs that he's gonna write. But Just Mercy is
Speaker 1: the most important movie that I've ever been involved with
Speaker 1: because of the fact of the introduction of Brian Stevenson.
Speaker 1: Because Brian Stevenson says and deals with and talks about
Speaker 1: every day everything that we everything that we talk about
Speaker 1: on social media but don't know where to go. You know,
Speaker 1: there'll be things where you're looking on social media and
Speaker 1: you'll be so mad about I see this black team
Speaker 1: or I see this person. These attrocities happens, and we'll
Speaker 1: get on and we'll will comment about it. But this
Speaker 1: gives us an opportunity to come see a movie which
Speaker 1: is not only art, uh, but it's educational. It's inspirational.
Speaker 1: So much perspective, doesn't he Janie, He has so much
Speaker 1: perspective and it's so listen. I get. I would get
Speaker 1: upset when people would say about a black man that
Speaker 1: he speaks so well, But then I found myself saying
Speaker 1: this about Brian Steveson, that he speaks so well, but
Speaker 1: not speaking so well. It's what he's saying. He's telling
Speaker 1: us about our past. He's telling us about what we
Speaker 1: need to get, what we need to get to, and
Speaker 1: how how bad things are. But he's saying it in
Speaker 1: a way that everyone could be inclusive. These events happened
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, but against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 1: and I think a modern reckoning of all these issues
Speaker 1: and the genesis of the problem, you must feel like
Speaker 1: this is more relevant than ever before. To really explore
Speaker 1: how we got here, and that's what I think Brian
Speaker 1: does so beautifully. He kind of connects threads in history
Speaker 1: from reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation to what is modern day
Speaker 1: segregation really de facto segregation. What the thing is that
Speaker 1: you can see it now. You know, years back we
Speaker 1: don't have social media, and now you can actually go
Speaker 1: on your your phone and see atrocities today modern day
Speaker 1: two thou nineteen in the twenty of something going bad
Speaker 1: because of a person who's uh color of skin. You
Speaker 1: see a young uh, you see a black man being
Speaker 1: treated a certain way or shot and killed for a
Speaker 1: traffic stop started off as your blinker was out something
Speaker 1: small and he ends up dead. And then you see
Speaker 1: someone who's not black, white carry out a crazy atrocity
Speaker 1: and they apprehend them, they take them to get something
Speaker 1: to eat. Brian Stevenson has been fighting this fight in
Speaker 1: the shadows for years. So that's why this movie is
Speaker 1: so important. Is a want. It's important for everybody rarely
Speaker 1: behind it because I always say, what happens in the
Speaker 1: hood usually gets to the suburbs. So eventually these types
Speaker 1: of things will will will, We'll touch you in some
Speaker 1: type of way. So, like I said, the movie does
Speaker 1: something and I haven't seen a movie do, especially when
Speaker 1: people get a chance to watch it with other people.
Speaker 1: What are the qualities you admire most about Bryan Stevenson?
Speaker 1: His humility, his drive, his focus, UH, his strategic way
Speaker 1: they were in which he moves and thinks, um, his selflessness,
Speaker 1: his um, his heart, his compassion, his persistent his unwavering persistence.
Speaker 1: Jamie says all the time, he just doesn't fatigue. You know,
Speaker 1: the guys NonStop from Supreme Court case at the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court case, back to set, back to Supreme Court. You know,
Speaker 1: he's constantly exactly what do you think me that I
Speaker 1: just I just think his his his courage, you know,
Speaker 1: being a young man from the South, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: it makes you tuck your blackness in sometimes, Like I've
Speaker 1: been in situations where I was like, man, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And to see someone who lives in the South and
Speaker 1: able to speak truth to people who who don't have
Speaker 1: a fondness of you, I think it's amazing. And I
Speaker 1: think it's amazing too, uh that he does it, like
Speaker 1: you told me pro pro bone on that he does
Speaker 1: it sometimes. Um uh even now he said, he goes
Speaker 1: through things that you know, he showed up to the
Speaker 1: court room and the and the judge thought he was
Speaker 1: actually you know, he thought he was on trial. He
Speaker 1: was on trial and you're over there. So the things
Speaker 1: that I think that that his his patience, his patience
Speaker 1: with with the system that is flawed when it comes
Speaker 1: to African Americans, I think it's amazing and we we
Speaker 1: all benefit from his patients. Well, I have been such
Speaker 1: a huge fan of his for many years, and I'm
Speaker 1: just so happy that the two of you are going
Speaker 1: to hopefully make him a household name. Thanks to just mercy.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you both. Up next, we'll have more
Speaker 1: with Brian Stevenson, his latest battle against the death penalty
Speaker 1: and how he's trying to reframe this country's historical narrative
Speaker 1: by exhuming the ghosts of our past. Brian Stevenson is
Speaker 1: the director of the Equal Justice Initiative. The goal of
Speaker 1: e j I, in addition to representing the most unrepresented,
Speaker 1: is to help people understand the true history of our country,
Speaker 1: including its darkest chapters, through the Legacy Museum in Alabama.
Speaker 1: But first I asked him about the recent news from
Speaker 1: Attorney General William Barr that the Trump administration will resume
Speaker 1: executing federal death row prisoners. You know, it's interesting is
Speaker 1: that the federal death penalty is not well understood. Some
Speaker 1: of the most extreme racial disparities in the death penalty
Speaker 1: actually exists in the federal system, and we just haven't
Speaker 1: done a very good job of creating reliability and fairness.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, the question of the death
Speaker 1: penalty in this country can't be answered by asking do
Speaker 1: people deserve to die for the crime safe committed? I
Speaker 1: think the threshold question is do we deserve to kill?
Speaker 1: And we have a system that is very unreliable, that
Speaker 1: is very unfair, that is biased, that doesn't treat people
Speaker 1: of color the same way they treat other people, that
Speaker 1: doesn't provide people with the resources that they need. You know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the film, I'm I'm really pleased
Speaker 1: to have a statistic that everybody is going to see
Speaker 1: when they see this movie, and it's a shocking statistic.
Speaker 1: And the statistic is is that, um, we've now proven
Speaker 1: innocent a hundred and sixty four people on death row.
Speaker 1: That means for every nine people who have been executed
Speaker 1: in this country, we've identified one innocent personal death row.
Speaker 1: And when you think about that, it's completely unacceptable that
Speaker 1: we're still trying to execute people. If we learned that
Speaker 1: one out of nine apples in the store would kill
Speaker 1: you if you touched it or bit into it, we
Speaker 1: would stop selling apples. Nobody would get on a plane
Speaker 1: if for one out of nine planes goes up and crashes,
Speaker 1: and everybody does. But we're accepting it in the context
Speaker 1: of the death penalty. And I think what's disappointing about
Speaker 1: trying to resume the federal death penalty is that we
Speaker 1: haven't done the hard work of making that death penalty
Speaker 1: reliable and fair. And so I know that there are
Speaker 1: lawyers who are going to be fighting against that, and
Speaker 1: I hope this becomes just a moment in this effort,
Speaker 1: we've seen a lot of states reject the death penalty.
Speaker 1: There's a moratorium in California right now. The numbers of
Speaker 1: death sentences has decreased dramatically in the last decade or so.
Speaker 1: I think the progress that we're making will ultimately happen.
Speaker 1: I think in a generation fifty years from now, people
Speaker 1: will look back and say, why were they executing people
Speaker 1: in this country fifty years ago? Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: Legacy Museum and the Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery.
Speaker 1: The New Yorker compares the Legacy Museum to a great
Speaker 1: legal argument, and that it relies on both emotion and
Speaker 1: a precise accumulation of evidence. There's so many powerful things
Speaker 1: in Montgomery that I hope everyone will get an opportunity
Speaker 1: to see. But Brian, why was this such an important
Speaker 1: project for you? You know? I talked about the fact
Speaker 1: that I'm a product of Brown versus Board of Education.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be sitting here if lawyers hadn't come into
Speaker 1: our community and made it possible for me to go
Speaker 1: to high school in college. And I think it was
Speaker 1: about twelve or thirteen years ago when I began to
Speaker 1: think about that and I had this really chilling um thought,
Speaker 1: And the chilling, scary thought that I had was, um,
Speaker 1: I don't think we could win Brown versus Board of
Speaker 1: Education today. I don't think our court would do something
Speaker 1: that disruptive on behalf of a disenfranchised, dis empowered group.
Speaker 1: And the reason why I don't think they would do
Speaker 1: it is that we haven't created a narrative environment that
Speaker 1: actually pushes our institutions to never waiver when it comes
Speaker 1: to justice and fairness. And that's what made me think
Speaker 1: we have to start working outside the courts to create
Speaker 1: a healthier environment and environment that deals. Honestly, I don't
Speaker 1: think we're free. I think we're burdened by this history
Speaker 1: of racial inequality. I moved to Montgomery in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: There are fifty nine markers and monuments to the Confederacy
Speaker 1: in that city. Alabama still celebrates Jefferson Davis's birthday as
Speaker 1: a state holiday. A Confederate Memorial Day is still a
Speaker 1: state holiday. We don't have Martin Luther King Day in Alabama.
Speaker 1: We have Martin Luther King slash Robert E. Lee Day.
Speaker 1: The two largest high schools in Montgomery are Robberty Lehigh
Speaker 1: and Jefferson Davis. Hi, we've been practicing denial and silence,
Speaker 1: and we've created this false narrative about who we are.
Speaker 1: And I just think we're at a point in our
Speaker 1: nation's history. But we have to change that narrative. We're
Speaker 1: going to have to commit ourselves to true telling. South
Speaker 1: Africa committed to truth and reconciliation after apartheid. They have
Speaker 1: an apartheid museum that's powerful. If you go to the
Speaker 1: Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, it's surrounded by emblems and symbols
Speaker 1: that are designed to make sure that no one forgets
Speaker 1: the injustice of apartheid. If you go to Berlin, you
Speaker 1: can't go to hundred meters without seeing the markers and
Speaker 1: the stones have been placed next to the homes of
Speaker 1: Jewish families that were abductive during the Holocaust. The Germans
Speaker 1: actually want you to go to the Holocaust memorial. They're
Speaker 1: trying to change the narrative. They don't want to be
Speaker 1: thought of as Nazis and fascists. There are no Adolf
Speaker 1: Hitler statutes in Germany. But in this country, we haven't
Speaker 1: talked about the native genocide. We haven't talked about slavery.
Speaker 1: We haven't talked about Lynchia, we haven't talked about segregation,
Speaker 1: and I think that has to change. And so we
Speaker 1: built these sites because I believe we need an era
Speaker 1: of truth injustice. And the thing we have to remember
Speaker 1: is that truth and justice. Uh I just I think
Speaker 1: that truth and justice, truth and repair, truth and reconcil lation.
Speaker 1: I think these things are sequential. You got to tell
Speaker 1: the truth before you get to reconciliation. And for me,
Speaker 1: this is rooted in a desire. And I don't do
Speaker 1: this stuff because I want to punish us for our history.
Speaker 1: I really believe there is something that feels more like freedom,
Speaker 1: that feels more like a quality, that feels more like
Speaker 1: justice than what we have yet experienced in this nation.
Speaker 1: But to get there, we're gonna have to have these conversations.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to talk about these things. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have to build institutions like the ones we've hopefully built
Speaker 1: that will motivate people to go through those spaces and
Speaker 1: when they get to the end of the space, say
Speaker 1: never again. When it comes to tolerating bias and bigotry
Speaker 1: and hatred, that's the hope, and of course, the history
Speaker 1: of lynching in this country is something that has literally
Speaker 1: been buried from view. And that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that was so moving for me to see the mason
Speaker 1: jars full of soil from various lynching sites. You have
Speaker 1: done a project where you bring the descendants of lynching
Speaker 1: victims to the site where you believe their relatives were killed,
Speaker 1: were murdered, hung, shot, burned, and then they collect the
Speaker 1: soil because these people never had a proper burial and
Speaker 1: the stories of those victims are so heartbreaking. And the
Speaker 1: different colors of soil representing all the different regions where
Speaker 1: these lynchings took place. I mean, it's just such a powerful,
Speaker 1: powerful thing to see. It took my breath away, honestly.
Speaker 1: Well for me, it's about active truth telling and I
Speaker 1: and that's what I think, and it's sometimes hard you
Speaker 1: have to be courageous to do it, but I think
Speaker 1: that's the goal. I mean, we did one recently where
Speaker 1: middle aged black woman came and what we do is
Speaker 1: we send people to lynching sites. We give them an
Speaker 1: empty jar, we give them a little implement to dig soil,
Speaker 1: and they put the soil in the jar. It has
Speaker 1: the name of the lynching victim and the date, and
Speaker 1: then we put it in our museum and we put
Speaker 1: it in our display. And this middle aged black woman
Speaker 1: came and she was nervous about doing this by herself,
Speaker 1: and her site ended up being a remote location. But
Speaker 1: she drove down to this dirt road and got out
Speaker 1: of her car to go. I digged the soil. She
Speaker 1: found the tree, and she was about to start digging
Speaker 1: when a truck drove by and there was this big
Speaker 1: white guy in the truck and he drove by and
Speaker 1: he saw this black woman on the side of the
Speaker 1: road and he slowed down and he turned around and
Speaker 1: he drove back by, and she said he stared at
Speaker 1: her as he drove by, and then she said he
Speaker 1: parked the truck and he got out of the truck,
Speaker 1: big guy, and he started walking toward her, and she
Speaker 1: was terrified. And we tell people you don't have to
Speaker 1: explain what you're doing when you're doing this. You can
Speaker 1: just say you're getting dirt for your garden. And that's
Speaker 1: what she was going to do. And this big white
Speaker 1: guy wrote walked up to her and he said, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? And she said she was about to say,
Speaker 1: I'm just getting dirt from my garden, and she said,
Speaker 1: something got ahold of her. And she told that man.
Speaker 1: She says, I'm digging soil because this is where a
Speaker 1: black man was lynched in one and I want to
Speaker 1: honor his life. And she says. She got so scared
Speaker 1: that she started digging real fast, and the man just
Speaker 1: stood there. And then the man said, does that paper
Speaker 1: talk about the lynching? And she said it does, and
Speaker 1: he said, can I read it? And so she gave
Speaker 1: the man the paper and she kept digging while the
Speaker 1: man read. And then the man put the paper down,
Speaker 1: and he stunned her by saying, would you mind if
Speaker 1: I helped you? And she said of course. And the
Speaker 1: man got down on his knees, and she offered him
Speaker 1: the implement to dig the soil. He said, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you keep that. I'll just use my hands. And she said,
Speaker 1: this man started throwing his hands into the soil, and
Speaker 1: his hands were turning black with this when he kept
Speaker 1: throwing his hands, and there was something about the force
Speaker 1: with which he was digging this soil that moved her.
Speaker 1: And before she realized that, she had tears running down
Speaker 1: her face. And the man stopped and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm upsetting you. And she said no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're blessing me. And he used his hands and he
Speaker 1: dug the soil and put it in the jar, and
Speaker 1: she used the implement and they filled this jar and
Speaker 1: he got teared toward the top, and she said. The
Speaker 1: man started to slow down, and then she looked at
Speaker 1: the man and she noticed that his shoulders were shaking,
Speaker 1: and then she saw tears running down his face and
Speaker 1: she stopped and she put her hand on his shoulder
Speaker 1: and she said, are you okay? And the man said no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just so worried that it might have been my
Speaker 1: grandfather that lynched this man. And she said they both
Speaker 1: sat on the roadside crying, and they finished, and he
Speaker 1: stood up and said, I want to take a picture
Speaker 1: of you holding the jar. And she said, well, I
Speaker 1: want to take a picture of you holding the jar.
Speaker 1: And she brought this man back to Montgomery and they
Speaker 1: called me into the room and she she brought me
Speaker 1: over to him. She said, I want you to meet
Speaker 1: my new friend. He helped me dig the sore, and
Speaker 1: we want to put the jar on the museum exhibit together.
Speaker 1: I said that would be beautiful, and I tell that
Speaker 1: story because beautiful things like that don't always happen when
Speaker 1: you do truth work. But unless we do the truth work,
Speaker 1: we deny ourselves the opportunity for beautiful things to happen.
Speaker 1: And that's what I hope our sites represent. I hope
Speaker 1: that's what our work represents. It's hard, it's difficult, it's challenging,
Speaker 1: but I think something beautiful can come from this if
Speaker 1: we can find a way to lay down the burden
Speaker 1: of this long history of inequality, this long history of
Speaker 1: hatred and bigotry and racism. I really want to get
Speaker 1: to a different place, and for me, that means being
Speaker 1: willing to speak the truth. When it comes to talking
Speaker 1: about his own legacy, Brian is characteristically humble. I really
Speaker 1: do believe that if I've had any impact as a lawyer,
Speaker 1: if I've helped anybody during my legal career, if I've
Speaker 1: made a difference of representing my clients, it's not because
Speaker 1: I'm hard working, it's not because I'm smart or anything
Speaker 1: like that. It's because I got proximate to a condemned
Speaker 1: man and heard him sing about higher ground. And that's
Speaker 1: why I talk about proximity, because I think there's power
Speaker 1: when we get close to the poor and excluded in
Speaker 1: the condemned. There's knowledge, there's wisdom, there's insight, there's inspiration.
Speaker 1: There are portals that can change the world. That word
Speaker 1: proximate has always stuck with me, because if we're not
Speaker 1: exposed to other people, if we don't step out of
Speaker 1: our own bubbles and see how others live and what
Speaker 1: they face, how will we ever learn to be more
Speaker 1: empathetic and make the world a better place. I know
Speaker 1: it may sound hokey, but as Brian Stevenson says, getting
Speaker 1: proximant is quote key to our capacity to make a difference.
Speaker 1: The movie Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan's and Jamie Fox,
Speaker 1: is in theaters this Christmas. I highly recommend it. And
Speaker 1: that does it for this week's episode, which is actually
Speaker 1: my last episode of our very first season. I hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed listening to this podcast as much as I've
Speaker 1: enjoyed doing it. We're gonna take a little break while
Speaker 1: we prepare for season two coming in early gosh, can
Speaker 1: you believe it's But don't worry, we have a few
Speaker 1: bonus surprises coming your way, so keep an ear to
Speaker 1: the next question. Feed over the holidays, and if you
Speaker 1: haven't already, subscribe on Apple Podcast, the I Heart app
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen. And by the way, if you're
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by the tsunami of information coming at you from
Speaker 1: your phone every single day, check out my morning newsletter
Speaker 1: wake Up Call. Go to Katie Currek dot com to subscribe,
Speaker 1: and of course follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Speaker 1: And one more thing before I go, I'd recommend something
Speaker 1: else that can help you make sense of all that's
Speaker 1: going on these days. That's Cheddars Need to Know podcast.
Speaker 1: Every morning, host Jill and Carlo breakdown the biggest stories
Speaker 1: making headlines, and it's all under ten minutes, from politics
Speaker 1: and business to sports and entertainment. It's daily news with
Speaker 1: a little humor that will make you smile. If you
Speaker 1: haven't checked it out, you should. And so until next
Speaker 1: time and my next question, I'm Katie Couric. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening everyone. Next Question with Katie Curic is a production
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Speaker 1: producers are Katie Curic, Lauren Bright Pacheco, Julie Douglas, and
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Speaker 1: The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. Associate producers are Emily
Speaker 1: Pinto and Derek Clemens. Editing is by Dylan Fagan, Derek Clements,
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