Bryan Stevenson

I do believe in restoration because I have been the beneficiary of so much grace and so much mercy.

That man, before he was executed, gave me something so powerful, so beautiful, so affirming.

And that's why I think we should do better for the broken.

that we encounter.

We should think better of the broken that we encounter.

Because just as we can give to them, they can give to us.

And it does, for me, become important to talk about the fact that we can't create a perfect world, but we can create a world that's filled with more grace, more mercy, and more love.

I'm grateful that I am the heir of so many hopeful people, people who had to do things much harder than I've had to do.

By living in Montgomery, Alabama, I have a vantage point that I feel really privileged by.

The generation of people who came before me in that community would have to put on their Sunday best.

They'd go places to push for the right to vote, push for the right to be treated fairly.

They'd be on their knees praying and they'd get beaten and battered and bloodied.

And they'd go home and change their clothes and wipe the blood off, and they'd go and do it again.

And I haven't been beaten and battered and bloodied as the people who came before me.

I stand on the shoulders of people who did so much more with so much less.

It's their hope that shapes my hope.

My great-grandfather was enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia.

When I went to Harvard Law School, they tried to make everybody feel welcome on the first day.

And they took out groups of 13 students.

And my group leader just asked everybody in the group, why are you in law school?