December 19, 2019 • 38 mins
It’s a star-studded season 1 finale for Next Question! Katie sits down with her all-time favorite guest, human rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, in front of a live audience at the Aspen Institute’s 36th Annual Awards dinner. As Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 135 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced. His incredible life story is also the subject of the new film "Just Mercy," based on his 2014 memoir, starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx who also join Katie for a fascinating conversation about their experience bringing Stevenson’s story to life.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Next Question with Katie Curic is a production of I
Heart Radio and Katie Kuric Media. Hi everyone, I'm Katie
Curic and welcome to Next Question Today civil rights lawyer
and activist Brian Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative. If
I've had any impact as a lawyer, if I've helped
anybody during my legal career, if I've made a difference
(00:21):
of representing my clients, it's not because I'm hard working,
it's not because I'm smart or anything like that. It's
because I got proximate to a condemned man and heard
him sing about higher ground. And that's why I talked
about proximity, because I think there's power when we get
close to the poor and excluded in the condemned. There's knowledge,
there's wisdom, there's insight, there's inspiration, there are portals that
(00:43):
can change the world. And later I'll speak with the
man who plays Brian in the new movie Just Mercy,
Michael b Jordan's and Jamie Fox, who portrays the client
whose case put Brian Stevenson on the map. Brian Stevenson
has been fighting this fight in the shadows for years,
so that's why this movie is so important. My next question,
(01:04):
what made the real Brian Stevenson the man he is today.
I recently had the privilege of interviewing Brian, one of
my personal heroes, at a dinner for the Aspen Institute
in New York City. Hi, everyone, good evening, It's such
an I began by asking him about his childhood. He
grew up in a small rural town in southern Delaware, poor,
(01:26):
isolated and marginalized, but surrounded by family that taught him
the values that have guided him his entire life. I
was born at the end of the Jim Crow era,
but you could still see the signs that said white
and color. And I watched my parents trying to shield
me from that. I mean, we don't realize that that
signage wasn't They weren't directions, They were actually assaults. They
(01:49):
created real injuries. My parents were humiliated every day of
their lives, and yet they had enough hope that they
actually believed that they could raise us to enter a
world that would be better and more just. And I
think it was that sense that you have to believe
things you haven't seen that I was constantly being taught.
(02:11):
You know, I was a young person and I became
a church musician, and when I first started to play,
you know, they didn't want me to play during the services.
I had to play during the testimonial and people would
come in and they'd give their testimonies, and sometimes they'd
say these heartbreaking they tell these heartbreaking stories about what
had happened. They didn't have a food to feed their family,
(02:31):
or something had happened and something terrible. But during those
testimony services, they would always in their testimony by starting
to sing a song. They'd start singing something like wouldn't
take nothing for my journey now, And there was this
hopefulness And I think for me, that has been the
greatest gift. I live in Montgomery, Alabama now, and I
(02:51):
think about the people who were there sixty years ago
trying to do what I do, and I realized I'm
standing on their shoulders, and they did so much more,
so much less. One of the people who did so
much more was so much less was Brian's grandmother, a
woman who was born in the eighteen eighties in Virginia,
who had ten children and was the matriarch of the family.
(03:15):
She was tough and strong, but Brian says her love
was so expansive that she had a way of making
each of her grandchildren feel special and seen. My grandmother
was the daughter of people who were enslaved. Her parents
were born in slavery. My great grandfather learned to read
as an enslaved person, even though he knew he might
(03:35):
be sold or even injured, because he had that skill.
And she would talk about how when emancipation came, all
of the uh formerly enslaved people would come to their
house and he would read the newspaper every night, and
she would sit next to him, and she would be
so proud that he had that ability. And even though
she couldn't go to school, she learned to read, and
she taught her daughter, my mom, how to read. And
(03:57):
we were poor and we didn't always have the things
that we needed. But my mother went into debt to
buy the World Book Encyclopedia because she wanted us to
have this entry into the world. And when you see
people making those kinds of sacrifices, affirming those kinds of values,
it sustained you. It energizes you. And then the last thing,
my my, I feel really fortunate to have been given
(04:20):
was a commitment to loving people. My my, my grandmother
told me, always stay on the side of love, even
when people treat you bad, even when people hate you,
even when people mistreat you. You have to stay on
the side of love because once you leave the side
of love, you give away the most important parts of yourself.
You become vulnerable to all of those emotions that will
destroy you. So you have to stay on the side
(04:42):
of love. My people, my parents, my grandparents, despite the
brutality and the mistreatment, didn't hate anybody. And it's a
precious gift that they have given me. And I've tried
to hold on to that gift, and it's the gift
I want to give to my clients and the people
I work with, and it has very much centered the
work that I've done throughout my career. So both hope
and love, hope and law. Yeah, and you would think
(05:03):
that a little eight year old Brian Stevenson knew he
wanted to be a public interest lawyer, you know, but
you didn't actually figure that out for quite a while.
You went to Harvard Law School, but you weren't particularly
jazzed about going and once you got there, you really
felt like an outsider. So at what point did you
feel like this is my calling, this is where I'm
(05:24):
going to commit my time and energy. Yeah, I mean
it was funny. I was so excited because nobody in
my family had gone to college. I was so excited
just to be in college, and I didn't think much
about what came next. And I was a philosophy major.
And it was really at the beginning of my senior
year that somebody came up to me and said, you know,
nobody is going to pay you to philosophize when you
graduated from college. And to be honest, that's how I
(05:47):
found my way to law school. It was very clear
to me, you don't need to know anything to go
to law school, you know. Uh, And so I signed
up for that. But I didn't have a real appreciation
of what lawyers did. I didn't I'd never met a
lawyer until I got to law school. And it was
very disoriented because I was concerned about racial inequality and
social injustice, and it just didn't feel connected to the
(06:09):
things I cared about, and I was really in the
middle of this kind of existential angst. Everything changed in
when Brian took a course that required him to spend
a month with a human rights organization providing legal services
to people on death row. He headed down to Atlanta
(06:30):
and into the prison system, and it was that experience
that really became transformative. I I went to death row,
I met people literally dying for legal assistance, and I
write about this in my book. The first person I
met was this condemned man. I had just been sent
down there to tell him that he wasn't at risk
of execution. And when this man came into the room,
(06:52):
he was burdened with change. He had handcuffs on his wrist,
he had a chain around his waist, he had shackles
on his ankles, and by the time they unchained him,
I was so nervous. I just started apologizing and I said,
I'm so sorry. I'm just a law student. I don't
know anything about the death mod And I finally said,
but I'm here because you're not at risk of execution
any time in the next year. And he was so
(07:13):
stunned by that statement. He said, wait, say that again.
And I said, you're not at risk of execution any
time in the next year. And then he said, wait, wait, wait, wait,
say that again. I said, you're not at risk of
execution any time in the next year. And this man
grabbed my hands and he said, thank you, thank you,
thank you. Said, you are the first person I've met
in the two years i've been on death row who's
(07:33):
not a death row prisoner or a death row guard.
He said, I've been talking to my wife and my kids,
but I haven't let them come and visit because I
was afraid i'd have an execution date. He said, now,
because of you, I'm going to see my wife. I'm
going to see my kids. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And I couldn't believe how, even in my ignorance, being
proximate to that man was so transformative. And we started talking.
(07:53):
And one hour turned into two hours, and two hours
turned into three hours, and the guards were waiting for
me to finish, and they got angry that I didn't
finish the visit after an hour, and they came bursting
into the room and they couldn't do anything to me,
but they were mad. And they threw this man against
the wall and they pulled his arms back and they
put the handcuffs on his wrist so tightly I could
see the metal pinching his skin. They wrapped the chain
(08:15):
around his waist. They put the shackles on his ankles.
They were treating him so roughly, and I begged them
to be gentler, but they ignored me, and they pushed
the man near the door. And when he got near
the door, I saw this condemnment planted his feet. And
when he planted his feet and the guards tried to
shove him, he didn't move. And that's when this man
looked at me and he said, Brian, don't you worry
about this, You just come back. And then that man
(08:37):
did something I've never forgotten. He stood there and he
closed his eyes and he threw his head back and
he started to sing, and he started singing as hymn
I hadn't heard. He started singing, I'm pressing on the
upward way, new heights, time gaining every day, still praying
as I'm onward bound. And then he said, Lord, plant
my feet on higher ground. And everybody stopped. The guards recovered.
(08:58):
They started pushing him down the hall way, and you
could hear the change claiming, but you could hear this
man singing about higher ground. And when I heard that
man sing, everything changed for me. That was the moment
that I knew I wanted to help condemned people get
to higher ground. But more than that, I knew that
my journey to higher ground was tied to his. And
I went back to Harvard Law School completely radicalized. You
(09:19):
couldn't get me out of the law school library. I
needed to know everything about federalism and comedy and the
doctor in the jurisprudence. And that's how it happened for me.
I went to death Row and I met a condemned
man and he sang to me, and it changed my orientation,
It changed my path, it changed my life. Let's talk
about Just Mercy just for a moment, because it's coming
out on December, and of course that is the case
(09:42):
at the center of the your two thousand fourteen book,
when you defended Walter McMillan played I think so incredibly.
I was lucky enough to see the film Jamie Fox,
and I thought he did an amazing job. Michael B.
Jordan of course plays you. How weird was that to
watch that? It's pretty weird? Um, you know, I'm just
(10:02):
I'm really I feel really good about the film. I
was very apprehensive because Hollywood oftentimes will take a story
and they'll do something formulaic, and I didn't want that
to happen. But Michael B who's a producer on the film,
was really committed to doing it right. The director, Deston
Creton was also committed, and the whole cast came together
and we're really committed to doing this in a way
(10:23):
that would honor the people that I've represented. And they
really put their heart into it, and I feel really
good about the film. Why are you doing this? Why
am my lawyer? I don't know why? As you lowering
it down here in Alabama taking these cases that ain't
nobody gonna pay you for. When I was a teenager,
my grandfather was murdering over a black and white TV.
(10:47):
We kept waiting for someone to show up to help.
And that's when I realized that outside my community, nobody
cared because to them, he's just another black man killed
in the projects. I know what it's like to be
in the shadows. It is surreal, uh, to to have
(11:11):
a film come out and and and Michael B is
obviously so so popular and so wonderful, and and he
was very committed. We spent a lot of time together
and I just wanted to do everything he could to
get it right. And he asked me, is that, Is
there anything I need to do to kind of get ready?
I said, no, you've got it. I said, there's just
one thing you don't need to do. And I told
(11:33):
him the one thing you don't need to do is
to lose the black panther creed body when you play me. Uh. Uh,
you should keep don't go on a lawyer diet, don't
try to you know. Uh and so uh and so
I appreciate him holding on to all of those assets
that he brings his other roles. Uh. But no, it's
(11:53):
it's been great and I'm really excited for people to
see the film, and for me, it's just a way
of getting people exposed to these issues. I've always believed
that if people saw what I see on a regular basis,
they would respond the same way. And I when you
see unfairness and abuse in this conduct, people have an
instinct to respond to that. We just have not been
exposed to it, and I hope the film changes that.
(12:14):
It is a case study and persistence. When you represented
Walter McMillan, I mean it was years of injustice that
he had to deal with, and and of all places, Monroeville, Alabama,
the birth where Harperle and Truman Capode grew up. Of course,
the setting for To Kill a mocking Bird that must
have been strange too. It is and I think one
(12:37):
of the reason why I focused on that case in
the book because I do think there's an irony in
the way we tell stories about who we are, and
there's a disconnect. And people love the story of To
Kill a mocking it's a beautiful book, and yet and yet, uh,
there's a truth that we haven't dealt with. You know,
the character in that story, Tom Robinson, dies of hopelessness.
(12:59):
He doesn't get justice. And we probably have about two
hundred awards in this country that are named after the
fictional lawyer Atticus Finch. And the question becomes, what are
we celebrating because we didn't achieve justice for the poor,
We didn't achieve justice for the person who was condemned.
And it's not enough to just try in a world
where justice requires something more. And I think that's the disconnect.
(13:23):
And when I went to Monroeville and started working on
this case, everybody would say, oh, have you been to
the Killa mocking Bird Museum? And I would say, well, no,
I haven't had time because I'm representing this innocent black
man who's been wrongly convicted in this facing execution and
I'm trying to help him. And they said, well, you
need to go to the Dikilamdian Bird Museum. And we
have romanticized that story. While we have tolerated a criminal
(13:46):
justice system that treats you better if you're rich and
guilty then if you're poor and innocent, we have tolerated
racial bias, while we have celebrated this fictional characters resistance
to some of that bias, but not their effectiveness and
confern that bias and breaking down that kind of romanticized
narrative and actually engaging with the actual story for me
(14:07):
has been really important because we won't get to justice
if we live in this fantasy world, in this romanticized
world that is so evident in many places in this country.
When we come back the actual story of Walter McMillan,
as told in the new film Just Mercy, we'll talk
with Jamie Fox and Michael B. Jordan's. The movie Just
(14:36):
Mercy is based on Brian Stephenson's memoir. It tells the
story of a black man in Alabama named Walter McMillan,
wrongfully convicted of killing a white woman he didn't know
in a town he'd never been to. Despite the egregious
lack of evidence, in McMillan was sentenced to death risk
(14:57):
one from Harp. You don't know what it is, and
you're guilty from the moment you're borne. And you can
buddy up with these white folks and make him laugh
and try to make him like you whatever that is,
and he say, yes, no man, But when it's your turn,
they ain't got to have no fingerprints, no where evidence
(15:18):
and all the witness that God the whole thing up,
and none of that matter. When all y'all think is
is that look like a man who could kill somebody.
Walter McMillan is played by Jamie Fox. It's so familiar
(15:39):
because as as black man, the perception of us is, yeah,
he probably did it so easily. He's put on death
row with no trial. And there he sits in a
hopeless place because I visited death row before for another movie,
and the worst thing you can give a person and
death row is is hope. And there he sits, and
(16:01):
as he sits, all of a sudden, he doesn't know
it at the time, but his Angel walks in and
as Brian Stevenson, played wonderfully by Michael B. Jordan in
the movie and Uh, they set out to do something remarkable.
Michael B. Jordan not only plays Brian Stevenson, the lawyer
who successfully overturned Walter McMillan's death sentence, but he's also
(16:21):
a producer on the film and had a big hand
in getting it financed. As a black man in America,
I thought it was really important to be involved at
the story. Learning about Brian Stevenson at such a late age,
I felt I was shocked that he wasn't more of
a household name. When I found out about his work,
had a chance to listening and watch his ted talk,
read his memoir, I was blown away by the work
(16:42):
that he was doing behind closed doors without any real
true support. So I felt like I could lend myself
my platform, my medium to help telling the story and
getting his story out to the masses. The first time
I visited Death Row, I wasn't expecting to meet somebody
the same age as me, grew up on the same
music from a neighborhood just like ours. Could have been
(17:06):
me mama, but stepping into the role of his real
life hero Brian Stevenson, who's also soft spoken and restrained,
took a different set of acting skills for the Black
Panther star. I think emotionally, the positions that Brian Stephen
has been in throughout this movie, throughout his his time
as being a defense attorney, you know, especially in the the
(17:28):
Deep South, the obstacles he had to encounter, I naturally
would have reacted much different. So to know that he
is such a reserved person that he did take his
pride and his ego and put it to the side
for the betterment of his clients. Knowing that, you know him,
emotionally reacting wouldn't wouldn't get anything done in that type
(17:50):
of way. So he's so strategic and it's so so
methodical and how he moves Uh. You know, it was
a challenge to go again sometimes your natural reaction at
the things uh and uh and and and play a
more reserved and right And you're right. He did it
because he knew that was the means to the end
(18:11):
he wanted to achieve. Meanwhile, how did Michael convince you
or did did it take any convincing? It was no convincing.
I've known Mike for for a long time. His mentor
I've watched and grow up. So I was humble and
honored to get that call from him. And there was
some personal things that we talked about. But the one
thing that I could tell you that in our business
(18:32):
is hard to find people that stand up people. And
he says, I want you to be in this film,
And basically he was giving my u my artistic integrity
back in a sense, and and I said, hey, I'm
in with both feet because I think, what what what
What I'll say about Michael b is that it's the
biggest start in the world and he could do anything
he wants to. But I think what was amazing, what
(18:54):
is amazing about his career is when he laid the
DNA of narratives like this in Fruitvale Station, where he
took all of our hearts and uh and emotions and
and just and just wild us. And then to take
that same narrative to the biggest movie ever, uh, Black Panther,
where he plays kill Monger, which is supposedly the villain.
But if you listen to what he was saying, even
(19:16):
as a villain, his narrative for us on the biggest stage,
We're still talking about our culture and what we needed.
So now, to me, this completes an artistic sentence of
many paragraphs that he's gonna write. But Just Mercy is
the most important movie that I've ever been involved with
because of the fact of the introduction of Brian Stevenson.
(19:37):
Because Brian Stevenson says and deals with and talks about
every day everything that we everything that we talk about
on social media but don't know where to go. You know,
there'll be things where you're looking on social media and
you'll be so mad about I see this black team
or I see this person. These attrocities happens, and we'll
get on and we'll will comment about it. But this
(19:57):
gives us an opportunity to come see a movie which
is not only art, uh, but it's educational. It's inspirational.
So much perspective, doesn't he Janie, He has so much
perspective and it's so listen. I get. I would get
upset when people would say about a black man that
he speaks so well, But then I found myself saying
(20:18):
this about Brian Steveson, that he speaks so well, but
not speaking so well. It's what he's saying. He's telling
us about our past. He's telling us about what we
need to get, what we need to get to, and
how how bad things are. But he's saying it in
a way that everyone could be inclusive. These events happened
thirty years ago, but against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter,
(20:43):
and I think a modern reckoning of all these issues
and the genesis of the problem, you must feel like
this is more relevant than ever before. To really explore
how we got here, and that's what I think Brian
does so beautifully. He kind of connects threads in history
from reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation to what is modern day
(21:09):
segregation really de facto segregation. What the thing is that
you can see it now. You know, years back we
don't have social media, and now you can actually go
on your your phone and see atrocities today modern day
two thou nineteen in the twenty of something going bad
because of a person who's uh color of skin. You
see a young uh, you see a black man being
(21:30):
treated a certain way or shot and killed for a
traffic stop started off as your blinker was out something
small and he ends up dead. And then you see
someone who's not black, white carry out a crazy atrocity
and they apprehend them, they take them to get something
(21:53):
to eat. Brian Stevenson has been fighting this fight in
the shadows for years. So that's why this movie is
so important. Is a want. It's important for everybody rarely
behind it because I always say, what happens in the
hood usually gets to the suburbs. So eventually these types
of things will will will, We'll touch you in some
type of way. So, like I said, the movie does
(22:17):
something and I haven't seen a movie do, especially when
people get a chance to watch it with other people.
What are the qualities you admire most about Bryan Stevenson?
His humility, his drive, his focus, UH, his strategic way
they were in which he moves and thinks, um, his selflessness,
his um, his heart, his compassion, his persistent his unwavering persistence.
(22:45):
Jamie says all the time, he just doesn't fatigue. You know,
the guys NonStop from Supreme Court case at the Supreme
Court case, back to set, back to Supreme Court. You know,
he's constantly exactly what do you think me that I
just I just think his his his courage, you know,
being a young man from the South, you know, sometimes
(23:06):
it makes you tuck your blackness in sometimes, Like I've
been in situations where I was like, man, I don't know.
And to see someone who lives in the South and
able to speak truth to people who who don't have
a fondness of you, I think it's amazing. And I
think it's amazing too, uh that he does it, like
you told me pro pro bone on that he does
(23:27):
it sometimes. Um uh even now he said, he goes
through things that you know, he showed up to the
court room and the and the judge thought he was
actually you know, he thought he was on trial. He
was on trial and you're over there. So the things
that I think that that his his patience, his patience
with with the system that is flawed when it comes
(23:50):
to African Americans, I think it's amazing and we we
all benefit from his patients. Well, I have been such
a huge fan of his for many years, and I'm
just so happy that the two of you are going
to hopefully make him a household name. Thanks to just mercy.
Thank you, Thank you both. Up next, we'll have more
(24:11):
with Brian Stevenson, his latest battle against the death penalty
and how he's trying to reframe this country's historical narrative
by exhuming the ghosts of our past. Brian Stevenson is
(24:32):
the director of the Equal Justice Initiative. The goal of
e j I, in addition to representing the most unrepresented,
is to help people understand the true history of our country,
including its darkest chapters, through the Legacy Museum in Alabama.
But first I asked him about the recent news from
Attorney General William Barr that the Trump administration will resume
(24:56):
executing federal death row prisoners. You know, it's interesting is
that the federal death penalty is not well understood. Some
of the most extreme racial disparities in the death penalty
actually exists in the federal system, and we just haven't
done a very good job of creating reliability and fairness.
I think that, you know, the question of the death
penalty in this country can't be answered by asking do
(25:19):
people deserve to die for the crime safe committed? I
think the threshold question is do we deserve to kill?
And we have a system that is very unreliable, that
is very unfair, that is biased, that doesn't treat people
of color the same way they treat other people, that
doesn't provide people with the resources that they need. You know,
at the end of the film, I'm I'm really pleased
(25:40):
to have a statistic that everybody is going to see
when they see this movie, and it's a shocking statistic.
And the statistic is is that, um, we've now proven
innocent a hundred and sixty four people on death row.
That means for every nine people who have been executed
in this country, we've identified one innocent personal death row.
And when you think about that, it's completely unacceptable that
(26:03):
we're still trying to execute people. If we learned that
one out of nine apples in the store would kill
you if you touched it or bit into it, we
would stop selling apples. Nobody would get on a plane
if for one out of nine planes goes up and crashes,
and everybody does. But we're accepting it in the context
of the death penalty. And I think what's disappointing about
trying to resume the federal death penalty is that we
(26:25):
haven't done the hard work of making that death penalty
reliable and fair. And so I know that there are
lawyers who are going to be fighting against that, and
I hope this becomes just a moment in this effort,
we've seen a lot of states reject the death penalty.
There's a moratorium in California right now. The numbers of
death sentences has decreased dramatically in the last decade or so.
(26:47):
I think the progress that we're making will ultimately happen.
I think in a generation fifty years from now, people
will look back and say, why were they executing people
in this country fifty years ago? Let's talk about the
Legacy Museum and the Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery.
The New Yorker compares the Legacy Museum to a great
(27:07):
legal argument, and that it relies on both emotion and
a precise accumulation of evidence. There's so many powerful things
in Montgomery that I hope everyone will get an opportunity
to see. But Brian, why was this such an important
project for you? You know? I talked about the fact
that I'm a product of Brown versus Board of Education.
(27:29):
I wouldn't be sitting here if lawyers hadn't come into
our community and made it possible for me to go
to high school in college. And I think it was
about twelve or thirteen years ago when I began to
think about that and I had this really chilling um thought,
And the chilling, scary thought that I had was, um,
I don't think we could win Brown versus Board of
(27:50):
Education today. I don't think our court would do something
that disruptive on behalf of a disenfranchised, dis empowered group.
And the reason why I don't think they would do
it is that we haven't created a narrative environment that
actually pushes our institutions to never waiver when it comes
to justice and fairness. And that's what made me think
(28:10):
we have to start working outside the courts to create
a healthier environment and environment that deals. Honestly, I don't
think we're free. I think we're burdened by this history
of racial inequality. I moved to Montgomery in the nineteen eighties.
There are fifty nine markers and monuments to the Confederacy
in that city. Alabama still celebrates Jefferson Davis's birthday as
a state holiday. A Confederate Memorial Day is still a
(28:33):
state holiday. We don't have Martin Luther King Day in Alabama.
We have Martin Luther King slash Robert E. Lee Day.
The two largest high schools in Montgomery are Robberty Lehigh
and Jefferson Davis. Hi, we've been practicing denial and silence,
and we've created this false narrative about who we are.
And I just think we're at a point in our
nation's history. But we have to change that narrative. We're
(28:57):
going to have to commit ourselves to true telling. South
Africa committed to truth and reconciliation after apartheid. They have
an apartheid museum that's powerful. If you go to the
Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, it's surrounded by emblems and symbols
that are designed to make sure that no one forgets
the injustice of apartheid. If you go to Berlin, you
(29:17):
can't go to hundred meters without seeing the markers and
the stones have been placed next to the homes of
Jewish families that were abductive during the Holocaust. The Germans
actually want you to go to the Holocaust memorial. They're
trying to change the narrative. They don't want to be
thought of as Nazis and fascists. There are no Adolf
Hitler statutes in Germany. But in this country, we haven't
talked about the native genocide. We haven't talked about slavery.
(29:38):
We haven't talked about Lynchia, we haven't talked about segregation,
and I think that has to change. And so we
built these sites because I believe we need an era
of truth injustice. And the thing we have to remember
is that truth and justice. Uh I just I think
that truth and justice, truth and repair, truth and reconcil lation.
(30:00):
I think these things are sequential. You got to tell
the truth before you get to reconciliation. And for me,
this is rooted in a desire. And I don't do
this stuff because I want to punish us for our history.
I really believe there is something that feels more like freedom,
that feels more like a quality, that feels more like
justice than what we have yet experienced in this nation.
(30:20):
But to get there, we're gonna have to have these conversations.
We're gonna have to talk about these things. We're gonna
have to build institutions like the ones we've hopefully built
that will motivate people to go through those spaces and
when they get to the end of the space, say
never again. When it comes to tolerating bias and bigotry
and hatred, that's the hope, and of course, the history
of lynching in this country is something that has literally
(30:41):
been buried from view. And that's one of the things
that was so moving for me to see the mason
jars full of soil from various lynching sites. You have
done a project where you bring the descendants of lynching
victims to the site where you believe their relatives were killed,
were murdered, hung, shot, burned, and then they collect the
(31:05):
soil because these people never had a proper burial and
the stories of those victims are so heartbreaking. And the
different colors of soil representing all the different regions where
these lynchings took place. I mean, it's just such a powerful,
powerful thing to see. It took my breath away, honestly.
(31:27):
Well for me, it's about active truth telling and I
and that's what I think, and it's sometimes hard you
have to be courageous to do it, but I think
that's the goal. I mean, we did one recently where
middle aged black woman came and what we do is
we send people to lynching sites. We give them an
empty jar, we give them a little implement to dig soil,
and they put the soil in the jar. It has
(31:48):
the name of the lynching victim and the date, and
then we put it in our museum and we put
it in our display. And this middle aged black woman
came and she was nervous about doing this by herself,
and her site ended up being a remote location. But
she drove down to this dirt road and got out
of her car to go. I digged the soil. She
found the tree, and she was about to start digging
(32:09):
when a truck drove by and there was this big
white guy in the truck and he drove by and
he saw this black woman on the side of the
road and he slowed down and he turned around and
he drove back by, and she said he stared at
her as he drove by, and then she said he
parked the truck and he got out of the truck,
big guy, and he started walking toward her, and she
was terrified. And we tell people you don't have to
(32:29):
explain what you're doing when you're doing this. You can
just say you're getting dirt for your garden. And that's
what she was going to do. And this big white
guy wrote walked up to her and he said, what
are you doing? And she said she was about to say,
I'm just getting dirt from my garden, and she said,
something got ahold of her. And she told that man.
She says, I'm digging soil because this is where a
black man was lynched in one and I want to
honor his life. And she says. She got so scared
(32:51):
that she started digging real fast, and the man just
stood there. And then the man said, does that paper
talk about the lynching? And she said it does, and
he said, can I read it? And so she gave
the man the paper and she kept digging while the
man read. And then the man put the paper down,
and he stunned her by saying, would you mind if
I helped you? And she said of course. And the
(33:12):
man got down on his knees, and she offered him
the implement to dig the soil. He said, no, no, no, no, no,
you keep that. I'll just use my hands. And she said,
this man started throwing his hands into the soil, and
his hands were turning black with this when he kept
throwing his hands, and there was something about the force
with which he was digging this soil that moved her.
And before she realized that, she had tears running down
(33:32):
her face. And the man stopped and he said, oh,
I'm sorry, I'm upsetting you. And she said no, no, no, no,
you're blessing me. And he used his hands and he
dug the soil and put it in the jar, and
she used the implement and they filled this jar and
he got teared toward the top, and she said. The
man started to slow down, and then she looked at
the man and she noticed that his shoulders were shaking,
and then she saw tears running down his face and
(33:55):
she stopped and she put her hand on his shoulder
and she said, are you okay? And the man said no, no, no,
I'm just so worried that it might have been my
grandfather that lynched this man. And she said they both
sat on the roadside crying, and they finished, and he
stood up and said, I want to take a picture
of you holding the jar. And she said, well, I
(34:15):
want to take a picture of you holding the jar.
And she brought this man back to Montgomery and they
called me into the room and she she brought me
over to him. She said, I want you to meet
my new friend. He helped me dig the sore, and
we want to put the jar on the museum exhibit together.
I said that would be beautiful, and I tell that
story because beautiful things like that don't always happen when
you do truth work. But unless we do the truth work,
(34:37):
we deny ourselves the opportunity for beautiful things to happen.
And that's what I hope our sites represent. I hope
that's what our work represents. It's hard, it's difficult, it's challenging,
but I think something beautiful can come from this if
we can find a way to lay down the burden
of this long history of inequality, this long history of
hatred and bigotry and racism. I really want to get
(34:58):
to a different place, and for me, that means being
willing to speak the truth. When it comes to talking
about his own legacy, Brian is characteristically humble. I really
do believe that if I've had any impact as a lawyer,
if I've helped anybody during my legal career, if I've
made a difference of representing my clients, it's not because
I'm hard working, it's not because I'm smart or anything
(35:19):
like that. It's because I got proximate to a condemned
man and heard him sing about higher ground. And that's
why I talk about proximity, because I think there's power
when we get close to the poor and excluded in
the condemned. There's knowledge, there's wisdom, there's insight, there's inspiration.
There are portals that can change the world. That word
(35:40):
proximate has always stuck with me, because if we're not
exposed to other people, if we don't step out of
our own bubbles and see how others live and what
they face, how will we ever learn to be more
empathetic and make the world a better place. I know
it may sound hokey, but as Brian Stevenson says, getting
(36:00):
proximant is quote key to our capacity to make a difference.
The movie Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan's and Jamie Fox,
is in theaters this Christmas. I highly recommend it. And
that does it for this week's episode, which is actually
my last episode of our very first season. I hope
you've enjoyed listening to this podcast as much as I've
(36:23):
enjoyed doing it. We're gonna take a little break while
we prepare for season two coming in early gosh, can
you believe it's But don't worry, we have a few
bonus surprises coming your way, so keep an ear to
the next question. Feed over the holidays, and if you
haven't already, subscribe on Apple Podcast, the I Heart app
(36:44):
or wherever you listen. And by the way, if you're
overwhelmed by the tsunami of information coming at you from
your phone every single day, check out my morning newsletter
wake Up Call. Go to Katie Currek dot com to subscribe,
and of course follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
And one more thing before I go, I'd recommend something
(37:06):
else that can help you make sense of all that's
going on these days. That's Cheddars Need to Know podcast.
Every morning, host Jill and Carlo breakdown the biggest stories
making headlines, and it's all under ten minutes, from politics
and business to sports and entertainment. It's daily news with
a little humor that will make you smile. If you
haven't checked it out, you should. And so until next
(37:29):
time and my next question, I'm Katie Couric. Thanks for
listening everyone. Next Question with Katie Curic is a production
of I Heart Radio and Katie Curic Media. The executive
producers are Katie Curic, Lauren Bright Pacheco, Julie Douglas, and
Tyler Klang. Our show producers are Bethan Macaluso and Courtney Litz.
The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. Associate producers are Emily
(37:52):
Pinto and Derek Clemens. Editing is by Dylan Fagan, Derek Clements,
and Lowell Berlante. Our researcher is Barbara Keene. For more
information on today's episode, go to Katie currek dot com
and follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Katie Curk.
(38:12):
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows
Next Question with Katie Curic is a production of I
Heart Radio and Katie Kuric Media. Hi everyone, I'm Katie
Curic and welcome to Next Question Today civil rights lawyer
and activist Brian Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative. If
I've had any impact as a lawyer, if I've helped
anybody during my legal career, if I've made a difference
(00:21):
of representing my clients, it's not because I'm hard working,
it's not because I'm smart or anything like that. It's
because I got proximate to a condemned man and heard
him sing about higher ground. And that's why I talked
about proximity, because I think there's power when we get
close to the poor and excluded in the condemned. There's knowledge,
there's wisdom, there's insight, there's inspiration, there are portals that
(00:43):
can change the world. And later I'll speak with the
man who plays Brian in the new movie Just Mercy,
Michael b Jordan's and Jamie Fox, who portrays the client
whose case put Brian Stevenson on the map. Brian Stevenson
has been fighting this fight in the shadows for years,
so that's why this movie is so important. My next question,
(01:04):
what made the real Brian Stevenson the man he is today.
I recently had the privilege of interviewing Brian, one of
my personal heroes, at a dinner for the Aspen Institute
in New York City. Hi, everyone, good evening, It's such
an I began by asking him about his childhood. He
grew up in a small rural town in southern Delaware, poor,
(01:26):
isolated and marginalized, but surrounded by family that taught him
the values that have guided him his entire life. I
was born at the end of the Jim Crow era,
but you could still see the signs that said white
and color. And I watched my parents trying to shield
me from that. I mean, we don't realize that that
signage wasn't They weren't directions, They were actually assaults. They
(01:49):
created real injuries. My parents were humiliated every day of
their lives, and yet they had enough hope that they
actually believed that they could raise us to enter a
world that would be better and more just. And I
think it was that sense that you have to believe
things you haven't seen that I was constantly being taught.
(02:11):
You know, I was a young person and I became
a church musician, and when I first started to play,
you know, they didn't want me to play during the services.
I had to play during the testimonial and people would
come in and they'd give their testimonies, and sometimes they'd
say these heartbreaking they tell these heartbreaking stories about what
had happened. They didn't have a food to feed their family,
(02:31):
or something had happened and something terrible. But during those
testimony services, they would always in their testimony by starting
to sing a song. They'd start singing something like wouldn't
take nothing for my journey now, And there was this
hopefulness And I think for me, that has been the
greatest gift. I live in Montgomery, Alabama now, and I
(02:51):
think about the people who were there sixty years ago
trying to do what I do, and I realized I'm
standing on their shoulders, and they did so much more,
so much less. One of the people who did so
much more was so much less was Brian's grandmother, a
woman who was born in the eighteen eighties in Virginia,
who had ten children and was the matriarch of the family.
(03:15):
She was tough and strong, but Brian says her love
was so expansive that she had a way of making
each of her grandchildren feel special and seen. My grandmother
was the daughter of people who were enslaved. Her parents
were born in slavery. My great grandfather learned to read
as an enslaved person, even though he knew he might
(03:35):
be sold or even injured, because he had that skill.
And she would talk about how when emancipation came, all
of the uh formerly enslaved people would come to their
house and he would read the newspaper every night, and
she would sit next to him, and she would be
so proud that he had that ability. And even though
she couldn't go to school, she learned to read, and
she taught her daughter, my mom, how to read. And
(03:57):
we were poor and we didn't always have the things
that we needed. But my mother went into debt to
buy the World Book Encyclopedia because she wanted us to
have this entry into the world. And when you see
people making those kinds of sacrifices, affirming those kinds of values,
it sustained you. It energizes you. And then the last thing,
my my, I feel really fortunate to have been given
(04:20):
was a commitment to loving people. My my, my grandmother
told me, always stay on the side of love, even
when people treat you bad, even when people hate you,
even when people mistreat you. You have to stay on
the side of love because once you leave the side
of love, you give away the most important parts of yourself.
You become vulnerable to all of those emotions that will
destroy you. So you have to stay on the side
(04:42):
of love. My people, my parents, my grandparents, despite the
brutality and the mistreatment, didn't hate anybody. And it's a
precious gift that they have given me. And I've tried
to hold on to that gift, and it's the gift
I want to give to my clients and the people
I work with, and it has very much centered the
work that I've done throughout my career. So both hope
and love, hope and law. Yeah, and you would think
(05:03):
that a little eight year old Brian Stevenson knew he
wanted to be a public interest lawyer, you know, but
you didn't actually figure that out for quite a while.
You went to Harvard Law School, but you weren't particularly
jazzed about going and once you got there, you really
felt like an outsider. So at what point did you
feel like this is my calling, this is where I'm
(05:24):
going to commit my time and energy. Yeah, I mean
it was funny. I was so excited because nobody in
my family had gone to college. I was so excited
just to be in college, and I didn't think much
about what came next. And I was a philosophy major.
And it was really at the beginning of my senior
year that somebody came up to me and said, you know,
nobody is going to pay you to philosophize when you
graduated from college. And to be honest, that's how I
(05:47):
found my way to law school. It was very clear
to me, you don't need to know anything to go
to law school, you know. Uh, And so I signed
up for that. But I didn't have a real appreciation
of what lawyers did. I didn't I'd never met a
lawyer until I got to law school. And it was
very disoriented because I was concerned about racial inequality and
social injustice, and it just didn't feel connected to the
(06:09):
things I cared about, and I was really in the
middle of this kind of existential angst. Everything changed in
when Brian took a course that required him to spend
a month with a human rights organization providing legal services
to people on death row. He headed down to Atlanta
(06:30):
and into the prison system, and it was that experience
that really became transformative. I I went to death row,
I met people literally dying for legal assistance, and I
write about this in my book. The first person I
met was this condemned man. I had just been sent
down there to tell him that he wasn't at risk
of execution. And when this man came into the room,
(06:52):
he was burdened with change. He had handcuffs on his wrist,
he had a chain around his waist, he had shackles
on his ankles, and by the time they unchained him,
I was so nervous. I just started apologizing and I said,
I'm so sorry. I'm just a law student. I don't
know anything about the death mod And I finally said,
but I'm here because you're not at risk of execution
any time in the next year. And he was so
(07:13):
stunned by that statement. He said, wait, say that again.
And I said, you're not at risk of execution any
time in the next year. And then he said, wait, wait, wait, wait,
say that again. I said, you're not at risk of
execution any time in the next year. And this man
grabbed my hands and he said, thank you, thank you,
thank you. Said, you are the first person I've met
in the two years i've been on death row who's
(07:33):
not a death row prisoner or a death row guard.
He said, I've been talking to my wife and my kids,
but I haven't let them come and visit because I
was afraid i'd have an execution date. He said, now,
because of you, I'm going to see my wife. I'm
going to see my kids. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And I couldn't believe how, even in my ignorance, being
proximate to that man was so transformative. And we started talking.
(07:53):
And one hour turned into two hours, and two hours
turned into three hours, and the guards were waiting for
me to finish, and they got angry that I didn't
finish the visit after an hour, and they came bursting
into the room and they couldn't do anything to me,
but they were mad. And they threw this man against
the wall and they pulled his arms back and they
put the handcuffs on his wrist so tightly I could
see the metal pinching his skin. They wrapped the chain
(08:15):
around his waist. They put the shackles on his ankles.
They were treating him so roughly, and I begged them
to be gentler, but they ignored me, and they pushed
the man near the door. And when he got near
the door, I saw this condemnment planted his feet. And
when he planted his feet and the guards tried to
shove him, he didn't move. And that's when this man
looked at me and he said, Brian, don't you worry
about this, You just come back. And then that man
(08:37):
did something I've never forgotten. He stood there and he
closed his eyes and he threw his head back and
he started to sing, and he started singing as hymn
I hadn't heard. He started singing, I'm pressing on the
upward way, new heights, time gaining every day, still praying
as I'm onward bound. And then he said, Lord, plant
my feet on higher ground. And everybody stopped. The guards recovered.
(08:58):
They started pushing him down the hall way, and you
could hear the change claiming, but you could hear this
man singing about higher ground. And when I heard that
man sing, everything changed for me. That was the moment
that I knew I wanted to help condemned people get
to higher ground. But more than that, I knew that
my journey to higher ground was tied to his. And
I went back to Harvard Law School completely radicalized. You
(09:19):
couldn't get me out of the law school library. I
needed to know everything about federalism and comedy and the
doctor in the jurisprudence. And that's how it happened for me.
I went to death Row and I met a condemned
man and he sang to me, and it changed my orientation,
It changed my path, it changed my life. Let's talk
about Just Mercy just for a moment, because it's coming
out on December, and of course that is the case
(09:42):
at the center of the your two thousand fourteen book,
when you defended Walter McMillan played I think so incredibly.
I was lucky enough to see the film Jamie Fox,
and I thought he did an amazing job. Michael B.
Jordan of course plays you. How weird was that to
watch that? It's pretty weird? Um, you know, I'm just
(10:02):
I'm really I feel really good about the film. I
was very apprehensive because Hollywood oftentimes will take a story
and they'll do something formulaic, and I didn't want that
to happen. But Michael B who's a producer on the film,
was really committed to doing it right. The director, Deston
Creton was also committed, and the whole cast came together
and we're really committed to doing this in a way
(10:23):
that would honor the people that I've represented. And they
really put their heart into it, and I feel really
good about the film. Why are you doing this? Why
am my lawyer? I don't know why? As you lowering
it down here in Alabama taking these cases that ain't
nobody gonna pay you for. When I was a teenager,
my grandfather was murdering over a black and white TV.
(10:47):
We kept waiting for someone to show up to help.
And that's when I realized that outside my community, nobody
cared because to them, he's just another black man killed
in the projects. I know what it's like to be
in the shadows. It is surreal, uh, to to have
(11:11):
a film come out and and and Michael B is
obviously so so popular and so wonderful, and and he
was very committed. We spent a lot of time together
and I just wanted to do everything he could to
get it right. And he asked me, is that, Is
there anything I need to do to kind of get ready?
I said, no, you've got it. I said, there's just
one thing you don't need to do. And I told
(11:33):
him the one thing you don't need to do is
to lose the black panther creed body when you play me. Uh. Uh,
you should keep don't go on a lawyer diet, don't
try to you know. Uh and so uh and so
I appreciate him holding on to all of those assets
that he brings his other roles. Uh. But no, it's
(11:53):
it's been great and I'm really excited for people to
see the film, and for me, it's just a way
of getting people exposed to these issues. I've always believed
that if people saw what I see on a regular basis,
they would respond the same way. And I when you
see unfairness and abuse in this conduct, people have an
instinct to respond to that. We just have not been
exposed to it, and I hope the film changes that.
(12:14):
It is a case study and persistence. When you represented
Walter McMillan, I mean it was years of injustice that
he had to deal with, and and of all places, Monroeville, Alabama,
the birth where Harperle and Truman Capode grew up. Of course,
the setting for To Kill a mocking Bird that must
have been strange too. It is and I think one
(12:37):
of the reason why I focused on that case in
the book because I do think there's an irony in
the way we tell stories about who we are, and
there's a disconnect. And people love the story of To
Kill a mocking it's a beautiful book, and yet and yet, uh,
there's a truth that we haven't dealt with. You know,
the character in that story, Tom Robinson, dies of hopelessness.
(12:59):
He doesn't get justice. And we probably have about two
hundred awards in this country that are named after the
fictional lawyer Atticus Finch. And the question becomes, what are
we celebrating because we didn't achieve justice for the poor,
We didn't achieve justice for the person who was condemned.
And it's not enough to just try in a world
where justice requires something more. And I think that's the disconnect.
(13:23):
And when I went to Monroeville and started working on
this case, everybody would say, oh, have you been to
the Killa mocking Bird Museum? And I would say, well, no,
I haven't had time because I'm representing this innocent black
man who's been wrongly convicted in this facing execution and
I'm trying to help him. And they said, well, you
need to go to the Dikilamdian Bird Museum. And we
have romanticized that story. While we have tolerated a criminal
(13:46):
justice system that treats you better if you're rich and
guilty then if you're poor and innocent, we have tolerated
racial bias, while we have celebrated this fictional characters resistance
to some of that bias, but not their effectiveness and
confern that bias and breaking down that kind of romanticized
narrative and actually engaging with the actual story for me
(14:07):
has been really important because we won't get to justice
if we live in this fantasy world, in this romanticized
world that is so evident in many places in this country.
When we come back the actual story of Walter McMillan,
as told in the new film Just Mercy, we'll talk
with Jamie Fox and Michael B. Jordan's. The movie Just
(14:36):
Mercy is based on Brian Stephenson's memoir. It tells the
story of a black man in Alabama named Walter McMillan,
wrongfully convicted of killing a white woman he didn't know
in a town he'd never been to. Despite the egregious
lack of evidence, in McMillan was sentenced to death risk
(14:57):
one from Harp. You don't know what it is, and
you're guilty from the moment you're borne. And you can
buddy up with these white folks and make him laugh
and try to make him like you whatever that is,
and he say, yes, no man, But when it's your turn,
they ain't got to have no fingerprints, no where evidence
(15:18):
and all the witness that God the whole thing up,
and none of that matter. When all y'all think is
is that look like a man who could kill somebody.
Walter McMillan is played by Jamie Fox. It's so familiar
(15:39):
because as as black man, the perception of us is, yeah,
he probably did it so easily. He's put on death
row with no trial. And there he sits in a
hopeless place because I visited death row before for another movie,
and the worst thing you can give a person and
death row is is hope. And there he sits, and
(16:01):
as he sits, all of a sudden, he doesn't know
it at the time, but his Angel walks in and
as Brian Stevenson, played wonderfully by Michael B. Jordan in
the movie and Uh, they set out to do something remarkable.
Michael B. Jordan not only plays Brian Stevenson, the lawyer
who successfully overturned Walter McMillan's death sentence, but he's also
(16:21):
a producer on the film and had a big hand
in getting it financed. As a black man in America,
I thought it was really important to be involved at
the story. Learning about Brian Stevenson at such a late age,
I felt I was shocked that he wasn't more of
a household name. When I found out about his work,
had a chance to listening and watch his ted talk,
read his memoir, I was blown away by the work
(16:42):
that he was doing behind closed doors without any real
true support. So I felt like I could lend myself
my platform, my medium to help telling the story and
getting his story out to the masses. The first time
I visited Death Row, I wasn't expecting to meet somebody
the same age as me, grew up on the same
music from a neighborhood just like ours. Could have been
(17:06):
me mama, but stepping into the role of his real
life hero Brian Stevenson, who's also soft spoken and restrained,
took a different set of acting skills for the Black
Panther star. I think emotionally, the positions that Brian Stephen
has been in throughout this movie, throughout his his time
as being a defense attorney, you know, especially in the the
(17:28):
Deep South, the obstacles he had to encounter, I naturally
would have reacted much different. So to know that he
is such a reserved person that he did take his
pride and his ego and put it to the side
for the betterment of his clients. Knowing that, you know him,
emotionally reacting wouldn't wouldn't get anything done in that type
(17:50):
of way. So he's so strategic and it's so so
methodical and how he moves Uh. You know, it was
a challenge to go again sometimes your natural reaction at
the things uh and uh and and and play a
more reserved and right And you're right. He did it
because he knew that was the means to the end
(18:11):
he wanted to achieve. Meanwhile, how did Michael convince you
or did did it take any convincing? It was no convincing.
I've known Mike for for a long time. His mentor
I've watched and grow up. So I was humble and
honored to get that call from him. And there was
some personal things that we talked about. But the one
thing that I could tell you that in our business
(18:32):
is hard to find people that stand up people. And
he says, I want you to be in this film,
And basically he was giving my u my artistic integrity
back in a sense, and and I said, hey, I'm
in with both feet because I think, what what what
What I'll say about Michael b is that it's the
biggest start in the world and he could do anything
he wants to. But I think what was amazing, what
(18:54):
is amazing about his career is when he laid the
DNA of narratives like this in Fruitvale Station, where he
took all of our hearts and uh and emotions and
and just and just wild us. And then to take
that same narrative to the biggest movie ever, uh, Black Panther,
where he plays kill Monger, which is supposedly the villain.
But if you listen to what he was saying, even
(19:16):
as a villain, his narrative for us on the biggest stage,
We're still talking about our culture and what we needed.
So now, to me, this completes an artistic sentence of
many paragraphs that he's gonna write. But Just Mercy is
the most important movie that I've ever been involved with
because of the fact of the introduction of Brian Stevenson.
(19:37):
Because Brian Stevenson says and deals with and talks about
every day everything that we everything that we talk about
on social media but don't know where to go. You know,
there'll be things where you're looking on social media and
you'll be so mad about I see this black team
or I see this person. These attrocities happens, and we'll
get on and we'll will comment about it. But this
(19:57):
gives us an opportunity to come see a movie which
is not only art, uh, but it's educational. It's inspirational.
So much perspective, doesn't he Janie, He has so much
perspective and it's so listen. I get. I would get
upset when people would say about a black man that
he speaks so well, But then I found myself saying
(20:18):
this about Brian Steveson, that he speaks so well, but
not speaking so well. It's what he's saying. He's telling
us about our past. He's telling us about what we
need to get, what we need to get to, and
how how bad things are. But he's saying it in
a way that everyone could be inclusive. These events happened
thirty years ago, but against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter,
(20:43):
and I think a modern reckoning of all these issues
and the genesis of the problem, you must feel like
this is more relevant than ever before. To really explore
how we got here, and that's what I think Brian
does so beautifully. He kind of connects threads in history
from reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation to what is modern day
(21:09):
segregation really de facto segregation. What the thing is that
you can see it now. You know, years back we
don't have social media, and now you can actually go
on your your phone and see atrocities today modern day
two thou nineteen in the twenty of something going bad
because of a person who's uh color of skin. You
see a young uh, you see a black man being
(21:30):
treated a certain way or shot and killed for a
traffic stop started off as your blinker was out something
small and he ends up dead. And then you see
someone who's not black, white carry out a crazy atrocity
and they apprehend them, they take them to get something
(21:53):
to eat. Brian Stevenson has been fighting this fight in
the shadows for years. So that's why this movie is
so important. Is a want. It's important for everybody rarely
behind it because I always say, what happens in the
hood usually gets to the suburbs. So eventually these types
of things will will will, We'll touch you in some
type of way. So, like I said, the movie does
(22:17):
something and I haven't seen a movie do, especially when
people get a chance to watch it with other people.
What are the qualities you admire most about Bryan Stevenson?
His humility, his drive, his focus, UH, his strategic way
they were in which he moves and thinks, um, his selflessness,
his um, his heart, his compassion, his persistent his unwavering persistence.
(22:45):
Jamie says all the time, he just doesn't fatigue. You know,
the guys NonStop from Supreme Court case at the Supreme
Court case, back to set, back to Supreme Court. You know,
he's constantly exactly what do you think me that I
just I just think his his his courage, you know,
being a young man from the South, you know, sometimes
(23:06):
it makes you tuck your blackness in sometimes, Like I've
been in situations where I was like, man, I don't know.
And to see someone who lives in the South and
able to speak truth to people who who don't have
a fondness of you, I think it's amazing. And I
think it's amazing too, uh that he does it, like
you told me pro pro bone on that he does
(23:27):
it sometimes. Um uh even now he said, he goes
through things that you know, he showed up to the
court room and the and the judge thought he was
actually you know, he thought he was on trial. He
was on trial and you're over there. So the things
that I think that that his his patience, his patience
with with the system that is flawed when it comes
(23:50):
to African Americans, I think it's amazing and we we
all benefit from his patients. Well, I have been such
a huge fan of his for many years, and I'm
just so happy that the two of you are going
to hopefully make him a household name. Thanks to just mercy.
Thank you, Thank you both. Up next, we'll have more
(24:11):
with Brian Stevenson, his latest battle against the death penalty
and how he's trying to reframe this country's historical narrative
by exhuming the ghosts of our past. Brian Stevenson is
(24:32):
the director of the Equal Justice Initiative. The goal of
e j I, in addition to representing the most unrepresented,
is to help people understand the true history of our country,
including its darkest chapters, through the Legacy Museum in Alabama.
But first I asked him about the recent news from
Attorney General William Barr that the Trump administration will resume
(24:56):
executing federal death row prisoners. You know, it's interesting is
that the federal death penalty is not well understood. Some
of the most extreme racial disparities in the death penalty
actually exists in the federal system, and we just haven't
done a very good job of creating reliability and fairness.
I think that, you know, the question of the death
penalty in this country can't be answered by asking do
(25:19):
people deserve to die for the crime safe committed? I
think the threshold question is do we deserve to kill?
And we have a system that is very unreliable, that
is very unfair, that is biased, that doesn't treat people
of color the same way they treat other people, that
doesn't provide people with the resources that they need. You know,
at the end of the film, I'm I'm really pleased
(25:40):
to have a statistic that everybody is going to see
when they see this movie, and it's a shocking statistic.
And the statistic is is that, um, we've now proven
innocent a hundred and sixty four people on death row.
That means for every nine people who have been executed
in this country, we've identified one innocent personal death row.
And when you think about that, it's completely unacceptable that
(26:03):
we're still trying to execute people. If we learned that
one out of nine apples in the store would kill
you if you touched it or bit into it, we
would stop selling apples. Nobody would get on a plane
if for one out of nine planes goes up and crashes,
and everybody does. But we're accepting it in the context
of the death penalty. And I think what's disappointing about
trying to resume the federal death penalty is that we
(26:25):
haven't done the hard work of making that death penalty
reliable and fair. And so I know that there are
lawyers who are going to be fighting against that, and
I hope this becomes just a moment in this effort,
we've seen a lot of states reject the death penalty.
There's a moratorium in California right now. The numbers of
death sentences has decreased dramatically in the last decade or so.
(26:47):
I think the progress that we're making will ultimately happen.
I think in a generation fifty years from now, people
will look back and say, why were they executing people
in this country fifty years ago? Let's talk about the
Legacy Museum and the Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery.
The New Yorker compares the Legacy Museum to a great
(27:07):
legal argument, and that it relies on both emotion and
a precise accumulation of evidence. There's so many powerful things
in Montgomery that I hope everyone will get an opportunity
to see. But Brian, why was this such an important
project for you? You know? I talked about the fact
that I'm a product of Brown versus Board of Education.
(27:29):
I wouldn't be sitting here if lawyers hadn't come into
our community and made it possible for me to go
to high school in college. And I think it was
about twelve or thirteen years ago when I began to
think about that and I had this really chilling um thought,
And the chilling, scary thought that I had was, um,
I don't think we could win Brown versus Board of
(27:50):
Education today. I don't think our court would do something
that disruptive on behalf of a disenfranchised, dis empowered group.
And the reason why I don't think they would do
it is that we haven't created a narrative environment that
actually pushes our institutions to never waiver when it comes
to justice and fairness. And that's what made me think
(28:10):
we have to start working outside the courts to create
a healthier environment and environment that deals. Honestly, I don't
think we're free. I think we're burdened by this history
of racial inequality. I moved to Montgomery in the nineteen eighties.
There are fifty nine markers and monuments to the Confederacy
in that city. Alabama still celebrates Jefferson Davis's birthday as
a state holiday. A Confederate Memorial Day is still a
(28:33):
state holiday. We don't have Martin Luther King Day in Alabama.
We have Martin Luther King slash Robert E. Lee Day.
The two largest high schools in Montgomery are Robberty Lehigh
and Jefferson Davis. Hi, we've been practicing denial and silence,
and we've created this false narrative about who we are.
And I just think we're at a point in our
nation's history. But we have to change that narrative. We're
(28:57):
going to have to commit ourselves to true telling. South
Africa committed to truth and reconciliation after apartheid. They have
an apartheid museum that's powerful. If you go to the
Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, it's surrounded by emblems and symbols
that are designed to make sure that no one forgets
the injustice of apartheid. If you go to Berlin, you
(29:17):
can't go to hundred meters without seeing the markers and
the stones have been placed next to the homes of
Jewish families that were abductive during the Holocaust. The Germans
actually want you to go to the Holocaust memorial. They're
trying to change the narrative. They don't want to be
thought of as Nazis and fascists. There are no Adolf
Hitler statutes in Germany. But in this country, we haven't
talked about the native genocide. We haven't talked about slavery.
(29:38):
We haven't talked about Lynchia, we haven't talked about segregation,
and I think that has to change. And so we
built these sites because I believe we need an era
of truth injustice. And the thing we have to remember
is that truth and justice. Uh I just I think
that truth and justice, truth and repair, truth and reconcil lation.
(30:00):
I think these things are sequential. You got to tell
the truth before you get to reconciliation. And for me,
this is rooted in a desire. And I don't do
this stuff because I want to punish us for our history.
I really believe there is something that feels more like freedom,
that feels more like a quality, that feels more like
justice than what we have yet experienced in this nation.
(30:20):
But to get there, we're gonna have to have these conversations.
We're gonna have to talk about these things. We're gonna
have to build institutions like the ones we've hopefully built
that will motivate people to go through those spaces and
when they get to the end of the space, say
never again. When it comes to tolerating bias and bigotry
and hatred, that's the hope, and of course, the history
of lynching in this country is something that has literally
(30:41):
been buried from view. And that's one of the things
that was so moving for me to see the mason
jars full of soil from various lynching sites. You have
done a project where you bring the descendants of lynching
victims to the site where you believe their relatives were killed,
were murdered, hung, shot, burned, and then they collect the
(31:05):
soil because these people never had a proper burial and
the stories of those victims are so heartbreaking. And the
different colors of soil representing all the different regions where
these lynchings took place. I mean, it's just such a powerful,
powerful thing to see. It took my breath away, honestly.
(31:27):
Well for me, it's about active truth telling and I
and that's what I think, and it's sometimes hard you
have to be courageous to do it, but I think
that's the goal. I mean, we did one recently where
middle aged black woman came and what we do is
we send people to lynching sites. We give them an
empty jar, we give them a little implement to dig soil,
and they put the soil in the jar. It has
(31:48):
the name of the lynching victim and the date, and
then we put it in our museum and we put
it in our display. And this middle aged black woman
came and she was nervous about doing this by herself,
and her site ended up being a remote location. But
she drove down to this dirt road and got out
of her car to go. I digged the soil. She
found the tree, and she was about to start digging
(32:09):
when a truck drove by and there was this big
white guy in the truck and he drove by and
he saw this black woman on the side of the
road and he slowed down and he turned around and
he drove back by, and she said he stared at
her as he drove by, and then she said he
parked the truck and he got out of the truck,
big guy, and he started walking toward her, and she
was terrified. And we tell people you don't have to
(32:29):
explain what you're doing when you're doing this. You can
just say you're getting dirt for your garden. And that's
what she was going to do. And this big white
guy wrote walked up to her and he said, what
are you doing? And she said she was about to say,
I'm just getting dirt from my garden, and she said,
something got ahold of her. And she told that man.
She says, I'm digging soil because this is where a
black man was lynched in one and I want to
honor his life. And she says. She got so scared
(32:51):
that she started digging real fast, and the man just
stood there. And then the man said, does that paper
talk about the lynching? And she said it does, and
he said, can I read it? And so she gave
the man the paper and she kept digging while the
man read. And then the man put the paper down,
and he stunned her by saying, would you mind if
I helped you? And she said of course. And the
(33:12):
man got down on his knees, and she offered him
the implement to dig the soil. He said, no, no, no, no, no,
you keep that. I'll just use my hands. And she said,
this man started throwing his hands into the soil, and
his hands were turning black with this when he kept
throwing his hands, and there was something about the force
with which he was digging this soil that moved her.
And before she realized that, she had tears running down
(33:32):
her face. And the man stopped and he said, oh,
I'm sorry, I'm upsetting you. And she said no, no, no, no,
you're blessing me. And he used his hands and he
dug the soil and put it in the jar, and
she used the implement and they filled this jar and
he got teared toward the top, and she said. The
man started to slow down, and then she looked at
the man and she noticed that his shoulders were shaking,
and then she saw tears running down his face and
(33:55):
she stopped and she put her hand on his shoulder
and she said, are you okay? And the man said no, no, no,
I'm just so worried that it might have been my
grandfather that lynched this man. And she said they both
sat on the roadside crying, and they finished, and he
stood up and said, I want to take a picture
of you holding the jar. And she said, well, I
(34:15):
want to take a picture of you holding the jar.
And she brought this man back to Montgomery and they
called me into the room and she she brought me
over to him. She said, I want you to meet
my new friend. He helped me dig the sore, and
we want to put the jar on the museum exhibit together.
I said that would be beautiful, and I tell that
story because beautiful things like that don't always happen when
you do truth work. But unless we do the truth work,
(34:37):
we deny ourselves the opportunity for beautiful things to happen.
And that's what I hope our sites represent. I hope
that's what our work represents. It's hard, it's difficult, it's challenging,
but I think something beautiful can come from this if
we can find a way to lay down the burden
of this long history of inequality, this long history of
hatred and bigotry and racism. I really want to get
(34:58):
to a different place, and for me, that means being
willing to speak the truth. When it comes to talking
about his own legacy, Brian is characteristically humble. I really
do believe that if I've had any impact as a lawyer,
if I've helped anybody during my legal career, if I've
made a difference of representing my clients, it's not because
I'm hard working, it's not because I'm smart or anything
(35:19):
like that. It's because I got proximate to a condemned
man and heard him sing about higher ground. And that's
why I talk about proximity, because I think there's power
when we get close to the poor and excluded in
the condemned. There's knowledge, there's wisdom, there's insight, there's inspiration.
There are portals that can change the world. That word
(35:40):
proximate has always stuck with me, because if we're not
exposed to other people, if we don't step out of
our own bubbles and see how others live and what
they face, how will we ever learn to be more
empathetic and make the world a better place. I know
it may sound hokey, but as Brian Stevenson says, getting
(36:00):
proximant is quote key to our capacity to make a difference.
The movie Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan's and Jamie Fox,
is in theaters this Christmas. I highly recommend it. And
that does it for this week's episode, which is actually
my last episode of our very first season. I hope
you've enjoyed listening to this podcast as much as I've
(36:23):
enjoyed doing it. We're gonna take a little break while
we prepare for season two coming in early gosh, can
you believe it's But don't worry, we have a few
bonus surprises coming your way, so keep an ear to
the next question. Feed over the holidays, and if you
haven't already, subscribe on Apple Podcast, the I Heart app
(36:44):
or wherever you listen. And by the way, if you're
overwhelmed by the tsunami of information coming at you from
your phone every single day, check out my morning newsletter
wake Up Call. Go to Katie Currek dot com to subscribe,
and of course follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
And one more thing before I go, I'd recommend something
(37:06):
else that can help you make sense of all that's
going on these days. That's Cheddars Need to Know podcast.
Every morning, host Jill and Carlo breakdown the biggest stories
making headlines, and it's all under ten minutes, from politics
and business to sports and entertainment. It's daily news with
a little humor that will make you smile. If you
haven't checked it out, you should. And so until next
(37:29):
time and my next question, I'm Katie Couric. Thanks for
listening everyone. Next Question with Katie Curic is a production
of I Heart Radio and Katie Curic Media. The executive
producers are Katie Curic, Lauren Bright Pacheco, Julie Douglas, and
Tyler Klang. Our show producers are Bethan Macaluso and Courtney Litz.
The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. Associate producers are Emily
(37:52):
Pinto and Derek Clemens. Editing is by Dylan Fagan, Derek Clements,
and Lowell Berlante. Our researcher is Barbara Keene. For more
information on today's episode, go to Katie currek dot com
and follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Katie Curk.
(38:12):
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows
Host
Katie Couric
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