Bryan Stevenson

He didn't know a civil war was coming the next decade, but he still had that hope of freedom.

And after emancipation, my grandmother told me that my great-grandfather would sit on the porch of their home and read the newspaper to people who were formerly enslaved who didn't know how to read because he wanted them to know what was going on.

And she loved the fact that he knew how to read and she would push her siblings out of the way when he started reading and she would wrap her arms around his leg when he started reading because she wanted to learn to read.

And she thought you learned to read by touching somebody while they read.

And he figured out what she was doing.

He said, no, Victoria, that's not how you learn to read.

I'll teach you how to read.

And he taught her how to read.

And my grandmother worked as a domestic her whole life, but she was a reader.

She had this hope that reading could create a better world, a bigger world, a more fulfilling world.

And she gave it to her children.

My grandmother had 10 children.

My mom was the youngest.

of her 10 kids, I'd go visit my grandmother and sometimes she'd stand on the porch and before she would let you in, you would have to read something from a book.

That's how committed she was to reading.

As I said, we grew up in this poor community.

A lot of people didn't have a lot of things.

There were people who had outhouses.

They didn't have running water.

Most of the people worked in poultry plants.