Bryan Stevenson

You didn't see a lot of hope outside the door.

But when I was a little boy, my mother went into debt

and bought us the World Book Encyclopedia.

She bought us these books, and you could see so many beautiful things in these books, the things you couldn't see outside the door.

And she had this hope that this investment in books that she couldn't afford would do something for her children.

And I can't claim to have always understood that because when you're 10, Christmas comes along, you go outside and your friends are like, well, I got a bicycle, I got a baseball, I got a basketball.

And I'd have to say, well, I got volume G of the World Book Encyclopedia.

But I told my classmates at Harvard Law School, I'm here because there are generations of hopeful people here.

who have positioned me here.

It's the hope of my enslaved great-grandfather.

It's the hope of my grandmother who had to flee the South because of terror, violence, and lynching.

It's the hope of my parents.

And their hope is what sustains me.

And all of a sudden, I didn't feel diminished at Harvard Law School.

In fact, I felt like maybe I had something that other people might not have

That's a great question.

No, I had no idea.

I knew I wanted to help the poor.

I knew I wanted to give back in the ways that people had given me as a child of the civil rights movement.

I knew I wanted to do something about the justice quotient in this country, but I didn't know where that would take me.