If you're just the person with power, exercising that power fearfully and angrily, you're going to be an operative of injustice and inequality.
Bryan StevensonBecause my great-grandparents were enslaved people, the legacy of slavery was something that didn't seem impersonal or disconnected. That's what motivated me to get into law.
Bryan StevensonThat's what's provocative to me - that we can victimize people, we can torture and traumatize people with no consciousness that it is a shameful thing to do.
Bryan StevensonI think there is a contempt for the human dignity of people who were enslaved. You couldn't see them as fully human and so you didn't respect their desire to be connected to a family and a place. That was the only way you could tolerate and make sense of lynching and the terror that lynching represented.
Bryan Stevenson