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The greatest evil of American slavery was not involuntary servitude but rather the narrative of racial differences we created to legitimate slavery. Because we never dealt with that evil, I don't think slavery ended in 1865, it just evolved.

Bryan Stevenson

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Bryan Stevenson
Age: 64
Born: 1959
Born: November 14
Jurist
Lawyer
Organizational Founder
Professor
Writer
Milton
Delaware
Evil
Ended
Never
Narrative
Think
Slavery
Involuntary
Thinking
Created
Servitude
Differences
Dealt
Greatest
Evolved
American
Legitimate
Rather
Racial

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We don't need police officers who see themselves as warriors. We need police officers who see themselves as guardians and parts of the community. You can't police a community that you're not a part of.
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Always do the right thing even when the right thing is the hard thing
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Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.
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We live in a country that talks about being the home of the brave and the land of the free, and we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.
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I 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.
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Lynching is an important aspect of racial history and racial inequality in America, because it was visible, it was so public, it was so dramatic, and it was so violent.
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My parents, who grew up in terror and dealt with segregation and humiliation, nonetheless taught us to be hopeful and open and loving and not hateful toward anyone.
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You don’t change the world with the ideas in your mind, but with the conviction in your heart.
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The opposite of poverty is not wealth. I don't believe that. I actually think, in too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.
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That'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.
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Knowing what I know about the people who have come before me, and the people who came before them, and what they had to do, it changes my capacity to stay engaged, to stay productive.
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I love museums, and I think they're fantastic, but they don't touch the people who I frequently think need to be touched with at least some reminder of legacy.
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Whenever society begins to create policies and laws rooted in fear and anger, there will be abuse and injustice.
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Part of the reason why we're only now reaching a point in American society where we can talk about the need for truth and reconciliation and the legacy of slavery is that it was such a dominant part of our history.
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When you come to Montgomery, you see fifty-nine monuments and memorials, all about the Civil War, all about Confederate leaders and generals. We have lionized these people, and we have romanticized their courage and their commitment and their tenacity, and we have completely eliminated the reality that created the Civil War.
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