Bryan Stevenson

I didn't answer the question.

I told a joke.

I tried to distract people.

And as soon as that meeting was over, I called my mom.

I said, mom, I don't belong at this law school.

And I had one of those kind of mothers.

My mother said, what are you talking about?

You belong wherever you go.

You're the smartest person in the world.

You can do anything you want to do.

And then she said, now you need to go find those kids and tell them why you're really in law school.

And I felt better after talking to my mom, but I didn't think I could actually pull those kids together.

Two weeks into law school, I still felt off.

And I finally did what she encouraged me to do, and I found as many of the kids in my little group as I could.

And I said, I didn't tell the truth on the first day of law school.

I need to tell you why I'm in law school.

And I told them that my great grandfather, I said, I'm in law school because my great grandfather was enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia.

And despite the fact that it was against the law for an enslaved person to learn to read or write, my great grandfather risked his life to learn to read and write.

He could have been sold, he could have been killed, but he had a hope of freedom so great that he was willing to risk his life.

And this was the 1850s.