February 5, 2026 • 20 mins
In this timely and moving My Legacy Bonus Drop, civil rights lawyer and Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson is joined by Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent 28 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. Together, they share what’s been lost – and what still must be fought for – in a justice system shaped by fear, cruelty, and racial bias.
Together they reflect on:
- Why cruelty is a choice—and justice is a commitment
- What gets lost when we stop being shocked by injustice
- How hope is passed down, even in the darkest places
- The crisis in our courts
- Why this generation may be our most powerful yet
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is my legacy.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
As we begin Black History Month, today's bonus drop invites
us to look honestly at where we've been and where
we're being called to go. Groundbreaking civil rights attorney and
founder of the Equal Justice Initiative Brian Stephenson is joined
by Anthony ray Hinton, who was wrongfully convicted and spent
twenty eight years on death row. Together, they reflect on
the moral failures of our justice system today and what
(00:26):
it costs when society looks away. This is a conversation
about dignity, courage, and hope carried forward across generations.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Let's jump in.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
After representing over one hundred and forty people on death row,
what have they taught you about what's possible when we
see people's full humanity? Do we really have the capacity
as a society to create a system this certainly has
far less flaws.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah. I don't think we'll ever have the capacity to
get to a place where we should be trying to
kill people. I don't think that's something we can do.
And I think, to be honest, you know, Mark, I
think if we made the investment into helping the poor
and provided people with the legal health they needed, if
we confronted this history of racial bias and discrimination and
(01:18):
overcame the presumption of dangers and guilt. If we made
the commitment to healthcare for the millions of people who
are traumatized by violence, that are struggling and dealing with
all of these challenges, if we made the commitment to
creating opportunities for the people who are marginalized and vulnerable
and disfavored, and treat it so bad that if we
did all of those things, I then think we would
(01:41):
not want the death penalty. We would know that that's
not something that is effective and responding to this, and
I just think basically, we don't really want to be
a cruel society. We don't really want to be a
cruel nation. But more broadly, we absolutely could do so
much better with the with the in it, with our
(02:02):
crimino legal system.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
You know what I'm sitting here thinking. Uh. When I
was arrested, the officer told me there was five things
that was doing the convictment and he said, number one,
you black. Number two, a white man is gonna say
you shot it. Number three, you're gonna have a white judge.
(02:24):
Number four, you're gonna have a white prosecutor the number five,
you're gonna have an all white jewelry. No way in
there did he ever say we have evidence, we have fingerprints,
we have on our witness, we got you on camera,
or we got someone that gave us a description. And
even to this day, that still hunts me because this
(02:47):
detective knew they didn't need no evidence. They they had
the only evidence they need, and that is that I
was black. And until we got above skin color, we
will never be able to have a system mask you
just a and that's my Honi's pict You grew up
in Alabama.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
And when you think about the story that you just shared,
and after thirty years of being incarcerated wrongly, have you
seen any progress in our country?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Would I would say, yes, I've seen some progress, but
we haven't progressed as much as I had thought would
be after spending thirty years on a cage. Or if
I'm being honest with you, I think America is more
racist now than it was in his sixties. It's just
done more somewhat undercover, and so you have to be
(03:46):
somewhere on the lookout for it. I understand when I
go in a store, I'm being watched I can have
on or, as they say, a Cavin climbed suit. I
could have on a nice tar, I could my shoes
could be shy, But I'm still looked on as though
I'm there to rob someone. And it's the way you
(04:07):
go to a restaurant. I notice they see us in
a certain place, or I'm looking for all of these
things because I'm really trying to see how far have
we come. And I still believe that we made progress.
But in the same token, we lost a lot of
progress as well. And so if I had to see
(04:30):
here this morning and say or we better, I've said
this before. I definitely believe that we are somewhat better,
because that was the time in the state of Alabama
windows they came to get me. They probably would have
hold me in the middle of the tree in the backyard,
or they could have kept me. So at least I
got to jail, and that tells me that we made
(04:52):
some progress.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I mean, I think it's also interesting that question is
a really powerful question when I think about the legal system.
So and just Merseley, I wrote about Walt McMillan a
bunch of other people, and it was actually easier in
the early nineties to prove someone's innocence, and when they
were relieved because the court was so unprepared for that,
the culture and the society was so unprepared for that.
(05:15):
When you had overwhelming evidence of innocence, people were like,
oh my god, we got to do something. And you know,
he spent six years on death row. By the time
I met mister Hinton at the end of the nineties,
things had started to shift, and all of a sudden,
people were getting used to innocent people being on death row.
(05:36):
I remember calling media and people would say things like, well,
is there something extra. We've done the innocent story before.
That's not new news any longer, and they just weren't interested.
And the courts got acculturated to the fact that there
are innocent people on death row, and that added to
the chat. We presented the evidence within a year after
(05:57):
we started working with casts, and the court should have
said in two two thousand, oh my god, this is
a mistake. We're gonna let you. But instead they didn't,
and we had to fight and fight and fight, and
we had to go all the way to the US
Supreme Court. I went to the Attorney General, we went
to the prosecutor said, look at this evidence, and they
was like no. And actually, since he's been released in
(06:17):
twenty fifteen, I'm going to suggest it's even harder now
than it was in twenty fifteen. The court we had
in twenty fifteen we don't have today. You know, we
got a unanimous ruling, which gives me a lot of hope,
But there are people who are innocent and wrongly convicted
on death row right now who are not going to
(06:39):
have the same opportunity for release because we've just turned
our back. Our courts today are operating in a way
where they're much less concerned about the plight of innocent
people on death row. They're much less concerned about the
plight of the before, people who have been dictimized, people
who've been exploited because of their disabilities, and so in
that regard, I actually think we are in a worse
(07:00):
position than we were, you know, twenty twenty five years ago,
at least on these legal questions. And I feel like
we've made a lot of progress when we're sitting in
this office, when you know, when our first that we
didn't have a room like was to sit this at
the Eji. You know, it's a.
Speaker 5 (07:18):
Nicely appointed room. May I Well, we.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Created these sites, which I'm really proud of, so there's
a lot of progress. But we started doing our narrative
work because I'm a product of Brown Versus Board of Education.
I grew up in the community where black children couldn't
go to the public schools. County was eighty percent white,
twenty percent of black. If you had a vote, they
would have never voted to end racial segregation. It took
lawyers coming in to impose the rule of law to
(07:48):
force those school doors open. And I began to worry
about twelve years ago that we might not be able
to win Brown versus Board of Education. And today I'm
pretty persuaded that we could not win Brown versus What Education.
I don't think our court today would do something that
disruptive on behalf of disfavored people as the Court did
in nineteen fifty five, and that means we have absolutely
(08:10):
not made the kind of progress that we need to make.
We're in a worse place, which means that we're going
to have to engage even more to create the kind
of hopeful, healthy future that I believe all of us
want to see.
Speaker 6 (08:25):
We love it if you could share this episode with
someone who you admire, someone who shows up for you,
who cares about you, who lives their legacy every day.
We'll be back in a moment.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Now back to my legacy.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Is the institution the problem or is it the individual
system of judges.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
It's a great question. It's a great question. I think
it's a combination of both. So, for example, in the
state courts places like Alabama and jeyget our judges are elected.
And there was a time when if you were a
good judge and you were doing good work enforcing the
(09:10):
rule of law, no one would even run against you
because it was supposed to be apolitical. That's changed over
the last thirty years, and now we have judges who
are politicians and they're engaging in the same politics of
fear and anger that our elected officials in other areas are.
So they're saying, I'm for the death penalty, I'm for this,
(09:31):
I'm going to do away with that, I'm not going
to let people out of jails and prisons on technicalities.
And those individuals have now taken on the role of
judges and they're not operating as judges, they're operating as ideologues,
which means that they don't want to be associated with
releas inside of somebody from death row, even if the
evidence is of inos. And so in that sense, it
(09:52):
is the individuals. But in another sense, it's also the institutions,
because even in our federal courts, where people have life
tak we've lowered the bar. We now insist on a
kind of ideological affiliation when we appoint judges, and these
institutions have tolerated that. I mean your recall when President Obama,
(10:13):
when Justice Spilia died, President Obama should have appointed his replacement,
and the Institution of the United States Senate said, nope,
we're not going to play by the rules any longer.
We're not going to allow any candidate to move forward.
And now you're seeing institutions basically turning their back on
the rule of law, the obligations that courts must meet,
(10:38):
and so in that sense, it's also institutional. And so
I think we have to change both. I don't need
a judge who believes everything I believe. I don't need
them to be share my politics, but I do need
them to commit to the rule of law that the
law says you cannot torture. We don't allow torture. If
the law says you cannot convict someone who's not guilty,
we don't convict guilty innocent people. The law says you
(11:00):
can't engage in racial bias and jury selection, we don't
tolerate that. And we can have different political perspectives, but
that has to be your role. Otherwise I say, don't
be a judge, be a different kind of politician. And
so it is created a crisis. And I think that's
a really important question mark because I think we're really
in a moment of true institutional crisis. Because once you
(11:23):
lose the integrity and the reliability and the credibility of
the legal system, we're vulnerable to all kinds of excess.
When you study what happened in Nazi Germany in the
nineteen thirties, you had these politicians hitting on these others,
but you also have a legal system that could have
kept them in check. But when the legal system collapsed,
there was no check. I'm very worried about the moment
(11:45):
we are in. And you know, at least for me,
I say to judges. Mister Hinton and I have both
spoken to judges and lawyers said Ultimately, you're going to
be judge by what you do and what you don't do.
This moment that we are in is not going to
be the final story. In thirty years, people are going
to be talking about what was happening in twenty twenty five.
(12:07):
And I get frustrated because, you know, people say, if
I had have been alive during the time of slavery,
I would have been an abolitionist. Nobody says, oh, I
would have been in slavery. They also I would have
been an abolitionist. Everybody says, if I've been alive at
the beginning of the twenty century, I've been fighting against
Lynchings Martin. You know, everybody says if I've been there
Elva and Salva nineteen says, I've been in March and
win doctor Key, I would have participated in the boycott.
(12:28):
But I don't think you get to say that. If
in twenty twenty five you are tolerating the abuse of law,
the violation of the law, you're not doing what's right.
You're doing what's politically favored. If you don't do what's
right now, you can't claim to have been on the
right side of right in all those other periods of time,
and that's going to be the test our judges and
our institutions are going to have to pass in the
(12:51):
year that comes, and these this critical time period that
we're in right now.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
If you're looking for stories that move you, insights that
shift you in conversations as deeply within you hit the
subscribe button right now. It's the best way to support
this podcast and support your journey. We'll be back in
a moment now, back to my legacy.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
One of the things that we say is that, you know,
for those who said that they would have marched with
doctor King, we say, are you marching now?
Speaker 1 (13:28):
That's right?
Speaker 5 (13:29):
And I think it's important to underscore what you said
about the safeguards because we also talk about in our
house that the judicial system we went during the civil
rights movement, we went to the judicial system for relieve
and if that had not been in place, we would
not have seen the victories that we that we saw,
(13:50):
and that is what's so scary about what's now.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
What's going on now.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
We talk about the fact that our daughter, Martin Luther
King's granddaughter has fewer rights now at seventeen than the
day she was born, and her generation has progressively lost rights,
and that has not happened since the end of Reconstruction
and the beginning of the passage of black codes. Yeah,
(14:14):
but I will also say that for me, I have
a lot of hope because.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Of this generation.
Speaker 5 (14:24):
I mean, these these kids are truly, truly extraordinary, and
I think that they're more resolute.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
After the election.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
The hardest call that I had to make we were
in Washington was to our our daughter, not no matter
what side or who you voted for, just the fact
that you kind of had a sense that America was
not ready for a black woman.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
And yeah, to.
Speaker 5 (14:53):
Have to apologize to her, to say, and to all
black women, black girls, I'm sorry, I'm sorry that this
is still happening. But she actually, she and her generation,
you know, she was more resolute than ever the morning after.
And and so I do have a lot of hope
in this generation. I really think we're we're going to
(15:15):
see truly one of the greatest generations that this country
has has seen.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Thank you for sharing that, because I do think that's
what we had been taught. I mean, I feel like
I mean, I live now in Montgomery, Alabama. I walk
these streets where a generation ago people would put on
their Sunday best and they'd go places to push for
the right to boat. They'd go places to push to
be respected, and oftentimes while they were on their knees praying,
they'd getting battered and bloodied and beaten. And they would
(15:42):
go home and wipe the blood off in James the
colast and they'd go back and do it again. And
they didn't know what the outcome of the people who
did in the Montgomery boycott, which is so active this week,
they didn't know what the outcome was going to be.
Nobody had guaranteed that that was going to succeed. They
had to have that hope. And I think that's the
greatest lesson I was given, I think both of us
were given, is that we are the heirs of generations
(16:06):
of hopeful people. My great grandparents were enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia.
Yet my great grandfather learned to read while he was
in slave. Even though he could have lost his life.
He could have been killed because it was against the
law for an enslaved person to learn to read. He
had a hope of freedom so powerful that he was
willing to risk his life. In the eighteen fifties. He
didn't know a civil war would come a decade later,
(16:29):
but he had that. He had that skill. And my grandmother,
who worked as a domestic in whole life, I tell
people now, after emancipation, my great grandfather would stem in
the portrait of her home and he'd read the newspaper
formerly enslaved people who didn't know how to read. Every
week only in slave people would come over and he
would stand up and read the newspaper from front to back.
And my grandmother said when he started reading, she'd push
(16:50):
her siblings aside. She'd get next to him, and she'd
wrap her arms around his leg. And I said, Mama,
why do you do that? She said, I'd wrap my
arm around his leg because she said I wanted to
learn to read too. And she said, I thought you
learned to read by touching somebody while they read. And
her father said, no, that's not how you learn or read.
I'll teach you how to read, and you talk. My
grandmother how to read. And my grandmother and I worked
as a domestic. She was a reader. She had hope
(17:14):
that education could open things, and she made sure all
of her ten children were readers. Her grandchildren, I go
visit my grandmother. She'd stand on the porch, even on
a cold day, with a stack of books and you'd
have to read something before she would let you get
in the house to the house. And when I got
to law school at Harvard, you know, the first day
they put us in this group and everybody was asked,
(17:34):
why are you in law school? And they were all
talking about how they were the son or the daughter,
or the grandson or the granddaughter, or the nephew or
the niece of the lawyer. And I started squirming because
I knew I wouldn't related to any lawyers. And after
the seventh or ade student in booked some family connection,
I realized something I hadn't even realized until that moment,
and I realized that not only was I not related
(17:55):
to a lawyer, I realized I'd never even met a lawyer.
That's how they got to me. I felt so diminished.
I didn't answer the question. I just told a joke,
tried to get it. And I called my mom and said, Mom,
I don't belong in this law school. And my mom,
so what are you talking about? She said, you belong
wherever you go. She said, you're the smartest person in
the world. You can do anything you want to do. Now,
you put those kids together and you tell them why
you're in that law school. And I felt better after
(18:17):
I talked to my mother. But I didn't think I
could organize another student meeting, but eventually I did, and
I told them, uh, you know, I'm in this law
school because my great grandfather was in slave but he
had a hope of freedom. My grandmother worked poor jobs,
low jobs, but she had a hope. My mother, I
had a hope. I grew up in a poor, racially
segregated community. You didn't see much hope outside the doors.
(18:40):
People had out houses, not everybody worked at the poultry plants.
But my mom went into debt when we were children,
and she bought us the World book Encyclopedia. Yes, and
we had those books in our house. And I told
my classmates that I'm not related to a lawyer, never
met a lawyer, but I read all about the lawyers
in the books. And I tried to be honest, because
you know, when you're ten and the Christmas comes along
(19:02):
and you go outside and your friends are like, well,
I got a basketball, I got a bicycle, I got
a baseball I'd have to say, well, I got Volume
G of the World book Psychoplagy. Didn't hear that good then.
But I was in that law school because I was
given hope by the generations that have come before me.
And I think the greatest thing we can do for
your children and for the children that are coming is
(19:23):
to give them that hope, not let them be defined
by the despair and the challenges. And that's why, you know,
I think we're proud to be with you, because you're
also giving a lot of people hope. And part of
what has to happen is and here we are talking
to you in a space where people can learn about
mister Hinton's story, they can learn about the work we're doing.
They can know about this that wasn't always easier possible.
(19:45):
It takes effort to even create this, but that does
make me also very very hopeful about what we can achieve.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Thank you for joining us. If you enjoy today's conversation, subscribe, share,
and follow us on at my Life Legacy movement on
social media and YouTube. New episodes drop every Tuesday, with
bonus content every Thursday.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
At its core, this podcast.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Honors doctor King's vision of the beloved community and the
power of connection. A legacy plus studio production distributed by
iHeartMedia creator and executive producer Suzanne Hayward come executive producer
Lisa Lyle. Listen on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
get your podcasts.
This is my legacy.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
As we begin Black History Month, today's bonus drop invites
us to look honestly at where we've been and where
we're being called to go. Groundbreaking civil rights attorney and
founder of the Equal Justice Initiative Brian Stephenson is joined
by Anthony ray Hinton, who was wrongfully convicted and spent
twenty eight years on death row. Together, they reflect on
the moral failures of our justice system today and what
(00:26):
it costs when society looks away. This is a conversation
about dignity, courage, and hope carried forward across generations.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Let's jump in.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
After representing over one hundred and forty people on death row,
what have they taught you about what's possible when we
see people's full humanity? Do we really have the capacity
as a society to create a system this certainly has
far less flaws.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah. I don't think we'll ever have the capacity to
get to a place where we should be trying to
kill people. I don't think that's something we can do.
And I think, to be honest, you know, Mark, I
think if we made the investment into helping the poor
and provided people with the legal health they needed, if
we confronted this history of racial bias and discrimination and
(01:18):
overcame the presumption of dangers and guilt. If we made
the commitment to healthcare for the millions of people who
are traumatized by violence, that are struggling and dealing with
all of these challenges, if we made the commitment to
creating opportunities for the people who are marginalized and vulnerable
and disfavored, and treat it so bad that if we
did all of those things, I then think we would
(01:41):
not want the death penalty. We would know that that's
not something that is effective and responding to this, and
I just think basically, we don't really want to be
a cruel society. We don't really want to be a
cruel nation. But more broadly, we absolutely could do so
much better with the with the in it, with our
(02:02):
crimino legal system.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
You know what I'm sitting here thinking. Uh. When I
was arrested, the officer told me there was five things
that was doing the convictment and he said, number one,
you black. Number two, a white man is gonna say
you shot it. Number three, you're gonna have a white judge.
(02:24):
Number four, you're gonna have a white prosecutor the number five,
you're gonna have an all white jewelry. No way in
there did he ever say we have evidence, we have fingerprints,
we have on our witness, we got you on camera,
or we got someone that gave us a description. And
even to this day, that still hunts me because this
(02:47):
detective knew they didn't need no evidence. They they had
the only evidence they need, and that is that I
was black. And until we got above skin color, we
will never be able to have a system mask you
just a and that's my Honi's pict You grew up
in Alabama.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
And when you think about the story that you just shared,
and after thirty years of being incarcerated wrongly, have you
seen any progress in our country?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Would I would say, yes, I've seen some progress, but
we haven't progressed as much as I had thought would
be after spending thirty years on a cage. Or if
I'm being honest with you, I think America is more
racist now than it was in his sixties. It's just
done more somewhat undercover, and so you have to be
(03:46):
somewhere on the lookout for it. I understand when I
go in a store, I'm being watched I can have
on or, as they say, a Cavin climbed suit. I
could have on a nice tar, I could my shoes
could be shy, But I'm still looked on as though
I'm there to rob someone. And it's the way you
(04:07):
go to a restaurant. I notice they see us in
a certain place, or I'm looking for all of these
things because I'm really trying to see how far have
we come. And I still believe that we made progress.
But in the same token, we lost a lot of
progress as well. And so if I had to see
(04:30):
here this morning and say or we better, I've said
this before. I definitely believe that we are somewhat better,
because that was the time in the state of Alabama
windows they came to get me. They probably would have
hold me in the middle of the tree in the backyard,
or they could have kept me. So at least I
got to jail, and that tells me that we made
(04:52):
some progress.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I mean, I think it's also interesting that question is
a really powerful question when I think about the legal system.
So and just Merseley, I wrote about Walt McMillan a
bunch of other people, and it was actually easier in
the early nineties to prove someone's innocence, and when they
were relieved because the court was so unprepared for that,
the culture and the society was so unprepared for that.
(05:15):
When you had overwhelming evidence of innocence, people were like,
oh my god, we got to do something. And you know,
he spent six years on death row. By the time
I met mister Hinton at the end of the nineties,
things had started to shift, and all of a sudden,
people were getting used to innocent people being on death row.
(05:36):
I remember calling media and people would say things like, well,
is there something extra. We've done the innocent story before.
That's not new news any longer, and they just weren't interested.
And the courts got acculturated to the fact that there
are innocent people on death row, and that added to
the chat. We presented the evidence within a year after
(05:57):
we started working with casts, and the court should have
said in two two thousand, oh my god, this is
a mistake. We're gonna let you. But instead they didn't,
and we had to fight and fight and fight, and
we had to go all the way to the US
Supreme Court. I went to the Attorney General, we went
to the prosecutor said, look at this evidence, and they
was like no. And actually, since he's been released in
(06:17):
twenty fifteen, I'm going to suggest it's even harder now
than it was in twenty fifteen. The court we had
in twenty fifteen we don't have today. You know, we
got a unanimous ruling, which gives me a lot of hope,
But there are people who are innocent and wrongly convicted
on death row right now who are not going to
(06:39):
have the same opportunity for release because we've just turned
our back. Our courts today are operating in a way
where they're much less concerned about the plight of innocent
people on death row. They're much less concerned about the
plight of the before, people who have been dictimized, people
who've been exploited because of their disabilities, and so in
that regard, I actually think we are in a worse
(07:00):
position than we were, you know, twenty twenty five years ago,
at least on these legal questions. And I feel like
we've made a lot of progress when we're sitting in
this office, when you know, when our first that we
didn't have a room like was to sit this at
the Eji. You know, it's a.
Speaker 5 (07:18):
Nicely appointed room. May I Well, we.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Created these sites, which I'm really proud of, so there's
a lot of progress. But we started doing our narrative
work because I'm a product of Brown Versus Board of Education.
I grew up in the community where black children couldn't
go to the public schools. County was eighty percent white,
twenty percent of black. If you had a vote, they
would have never voted to end racial segregation. It took
lawyers coming in to impose the rule of law to
(07:48):
force those school doors open. And I began to worry
about twelve years ago that we might not be able
to win Brown versus Board of Education. And today I'm
pretty persuaded that we could not win Brown versus What Education.
I don't think our court today would do something that
disruptive on behalf of disfavored people as the Court did
in nineteen fifty five, and that means we have absolutely
(08:10):
not made the kind of progress that we need to make.
We're in a worse place, which means that we're going
to have to engage even more to create the kind
of hopeful, healthy future that I believe all of us
want to see.
Speaker 6 (08:25):
We love it if you could share this episode with
someone who you admire, someone who shows up for you,
who cares about you, who lives their legacy every day.
We'll be back in a moment.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Now back to my legacy.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Is the institution the problem or is it the individual
system of judges.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
It's a great question. It's a great question. I think
it's a combination of both. So, for example, in the
state courts places like Alabama and jeyget our judges are elected.
And there was a time when if you were a
good judge and you were doing good work enforcing the
(09:10):
rule of law, no one would even run against you
because it was supposed to be apolitical. That's changed over
the last thirty years, and now we have judges who
are politicians and they're engaging in the same politics of
fear and anger that our elected officials in other areas are.
So they're saying, I'm for the death penalty, I'm for this,
(09:31):
I'm going to do away with that, I'm not going
to let people out of jails and prisons on technicalities.
And those individuals have now taken on the role of
judges and they're not operating as judges, they're operating as ideologues,
which means that they don't want to be associated with
releas inside of somebody from death row, even if the
evidence is of inos. And so in that sense, it
(09:52):
is the individuals. But in another sense, it's also the institutions,
because even in our federal courts, where people have life
tak we've lowered the bar. We now insist on a
kind of ideological affiliation when we appoint judges, and these
institutions have tolerated that. I mean your recall when President Obama,
(10:13):
when Justice Spilia died, President Obama should have appointed his replacement,
and the Institution of the United States Senate said, nope,
we're not going to play by the rules any longer.
We're not going to allow any candidate to move forward.
And now you're seeing institutions basically turning their back on
the rule of law, the obligations that courts must meet,
(10:38):
and so in that sense, it's also institutional. And so
I think we have to change both. I don't need
a judge who believes everything I believe. I don't need
them to be share my politics, but I do need
them to commit to the rule of law that the
law says you cannot torture. We don't allow torture. If
the law says you cannot convict someone who's not guilty,
we don't convict guilty innocent people. The law says you
(11:00):
can't engage in racial bias and jury selection, we don't
tolerate that. And we can have different political perspectives, but
that has to be your role. Otherwise I say, don't
be a judge, be a different kind of politician. And
so it is created a crisis. And I think that's
a really important question mark because I think we're really
in a moment of true institutional crisis. Because once you
(11:23):
lose the integrity and the reliability and the credibility of
the legal system, we're vulnerable to all kinds of excess.
When you study what happened in Nazi Germany in the
nineteen thirties, you had these politicians hitting on these others,
but you also have a legal system that could have
kept them in check. But when the legal system collapsed,
there was no check. I'm very worried about the moment
(11:45):
we are in. And you know, at least for me,
I say to judges. Mister Hinton and I have both
spoken to judges and lawyers said Ultimately, you're going to
be judge by what you do and what you don't do.
This moment that we are in is not going to
be the final story. In thirty years, people are going
to be talking about what was happening in twenty twenty five.
(12:07):
And I get frustrated because, you know, people say, if
I had have been alive during the time of slavery,
I would have been an abolitionist. Nobody says, oh, I
would have been in slavery. They also I would have
been an abolitionist. Everybody says, if I've been alive at
the beginning of the twenty century, I've been fighting against
Lynchings Martin. You know, everybody says if I've been there
Elva and Salva nineteen says, I've been in March and
win doctor Key, I would have participated in the boycott.
(12:28):
But I don't think you get to say that. If
in twenty twenty five you are tolerating the abuse of law,
the violation of the law, you're not doing what's right.
You're doing what's politically favored. If you don't do what's
right now, you can't claim to have been on the
right side of right in all those other periods of time,
and that's going to be the test our judges and
our institutions are going to have to pass in the
(12:51):
year that comes, and these this critical time period that
we're in right now.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
If you're looking for stories that move you, insights that
shift you in conversations as deeply within you hit the
subscribe button right now. It's the best way to support
this podcast and support your journey. We'll be back in
a moment now, back to my legacy.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
One of the things that we say is that, you know,
for those who said that they would have marched with
doctor King, we say, are you marching now?
Speaker 1 (13:28):
That's right?
Speaker 5 (13:29):
And I think it's important to underscore what you said
about the safeguards because we also talk about in our
house that the judicial system we went during the civil
rights movement, we went to the judicial system for relieve
and if that had not been in place, we would
not have seen the victories that we that we saw,
(13:50):
and that is what's so scary about what's now.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
What's going on now.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
We talk about the fact that our daughter, Martin Luther
King's granddaughter has fewer rights now at seventeen than the
day she was born, and her generation has progressively lost rights,
and that has not happened since the end of Reconstruction
and the beginning of the passage of black codes. Yeah,
(14:14):
but I will also say that for me, I have
a lot of hope because.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Of this generation.
Speaker 5 (14:24):
I mean, these these kids are truly, truly extraordinary, and
I think that they're more resolute.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
After the election.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
The hardest call that I had to make we were
in Washington was to our our daughter, not no matter
what side or who you voted for, just the fact
that you kind of had a sense that America was
not ready for a black woman.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
And yeah, to.
Speaker 5 (14:53):
Have to apologize to her, to say, and to all
black women, black girls, I'm sorry, I'm sorry that this
is still happening. But she actually, she and her generation,
you know, she was more resolute than ever the morning after.
And and so I do have a lot of hope
in this generation. I really think we're we're going to
(15:15):
see truly one of the greatest generations that this country
has has seen.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Thank you for sharing that, because I do think that's
what we had been taught. I mean, I feel like
I mean, I live now in Montgomery, Alabama. I walk
these streets where a generation ago people would put on
their Sunday best and they'd go places to push for
the right to boat. They'd go places to push to
be respected, and oftentimes while they were on their knees praying,
they'd getting battered and bloodied and beaten. And they would
(15:42):
go home and wipe the blood off in James the
colast and they'd go back and do it again. And
they didn't know what the outcome of the people who
did in the Montgomery boycott, which is so active this week,
they didn't know what the outcome was going to be.
Nobody had guaranteed that that was going to succeed. They
had to have that hope. And I think that's the
greatest lesson I was given, I think both of us
were given, is that we are the heirs of generations
(16:06):
of hopeful people. My great grandparents were enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia.
Yet my great grandfather learned to read while he was
in slave. Even though he could have lost his life.
He could have been killed because it was against the
law for an enslaved person to learn to read. He
had a hope of freedom so powerful that he was
willing to risk his life. In the eighteen fifties. He
didn't know a civil war would come a decade later,
(16:29):
but he had that. He had that skill. And my grandmother,
who worked as a domestic in whole life, I tell
people now, after emancipation, my great grandfather would stem in
the portrait of her home and he'd read the newspaper
formerly enslaved people who didn't know how to read. Every
week only in slave people would come over and he
would stand up and read the newspaper from front to back.
And my grandmother said when he started reading, she'd push
(16:50):
her siblings aside. She'd get next to him, and she'd
wrap her arms around his leg. And I said, Mama,
why do you do that? She said, I'd wrap my
arm around his leg because she said I wanted to
learn to read too. And she said, I thought you
learned to read by touching somebody while they read. And
her father said, no, that's not how you learn or read.
I'll teach you how to read, and you talk. My
grandmother how to read. And my grandmother and I worked
as a domestic. She was a reader. She had hope
(17:14):
that education could open things, and she made sure all
of her ten children were readers. Her grandchildren, I go
visit my grandmother. She'd stand on the porch, even on
a cold day, with a stack of books and you'd
have to read something before she would let you get
in the house to the house. And when I got
to law school at Harvard, you know, the first day
they put us in this group and everybody was asked,
(17:34):
why are you in law school? And they were all
talking about how they were the son or the daughter,
or the grandson or the granddaughter, or the nephew or
the niece of the lawyer. And I started squirming because
I knew I wouldn't related to any lawyers. And after
the seventh or ade student in booked some family connection,
I realized something I hadn't even realized until that moment,
and I realized that not only was I not related
(17:55):
to a lawyer, I realized I'd never even met a lawyer.
That's how they got to me. I felt so diminished.
I didn't answer the question. I just told a joke,
tried to get it. And I called my mom and said, Mom,
I don't belong in this law school. And my mom,
so what are you talking about? She said, you belong
wherever you go. She said, you're the smartest person in
the world. You can do anything you want to do. Now,
you put those kids together and you tell them why
you're in that law school. And I felt better after
(18:17):
I talked to my mother. But I didn't think I
could organize another student meeting, but eventually I did, and
I told them, uh, you know, I'm in this law
school because my great grandfather was in slave but he
had a hope of freedom. My grandmother worked poor jobs,
low jobs, but she had a hope. My mother, I
had a hope. I grew up in a poor, racially
segregated community. You didn't see much hope outside the doors.
(18:40):
People had out houses, not everybody worked at the poultry plants.
But my mom went into debt when we were children,
and she bought us the World book Encyclopedia. Yes, and
we had those books in our house. And I told
my classmates that I'm not related to a lawyer, never
met a lawyer, but I read all about the lawyers
in the books. And I tried to be honest, because
you know, when you're ten and the Christmas comes along
(19:02):
and you go outside and your friends are like, well,
I got a basketball, I got a bicycle, I got
a baseball I'd have to say, well, I got Volume
G of the World book Psychoplagy. Didn't hear that good then.
But I was in that law school because I was
given hope by the generations that have come before me.
And I think the greatest thing we can do for
your children and for the children that are coming is
(19:23):
to give them that hope, not let them be defined
by the despair and the challenges. And that's why, you know,
I think we're proud to be with you, because you're
also giving a lot of people hope. And part of
what has to happen is and here we are talking
to you in a space where people can learn about
mister Hinton's story, they can learn about the work we're doing.
They can know about this that wasn't always easier possible.
(19:45):
It takes effort to even create this, but that does
make me also very very hopeful about what we can achieve.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Thank you for joining us. If you enjoy today's conversation, subscribe, share,
and follow us on at my Life Legacy movement on
social media and YouTube. New episodes drop every Tuesday, with
bonus content every Thursday.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
At its core, this podcast.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Honors doctor King's vision of the beloved community and the
power of connection. A legacy plus studio production distributed by
iHeartMedia creator and executive producer Suzanne Hayward come executive producer
Lisa Lyle. Listen on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Craig Kielburger
Marc Kielburger
Martin Luther King III
Arndrea Waters King
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