Razia Iqbal: Hello, my name is Razia Iqbal. Welcome to our podcast, Notes on a Native Son, about James Baldwin. This year marks the 100th birth anniversary of a man unique in American letters. Novelist, essayist, activist, achingly prescient about race and racial politics in America, but also those connecting ideas, the idealized notion of the American dream, and what it means to be an American. The list of who James Baldwin is and what he meant is long. It also goes completely against what Baldwin might say about himself.

James Baldwin: I was called all kinds of names. I had all kinds of labels on me before I was 19 years old. Well, you have to tell the world. I'm not your label. The label belongs to you. It doesn't belong to me. I have nobody to answer to. I had to defeat the world's intentions, and the only way I could do that was to make it very clear that I am not at all what I seem to be to you. I know what you are saying, but I'm not that person. I will make you know it that I'm not that person.

Razia Iqbal: Perhaps Jimmy Baldwin, the iconoclast is our subject. There are many writers who shun biographies, preferring through the lens of their work to be their own biographers. This podcast tries to get close to that. We have called it Notes on a Native Son after one of Baldwin's most famous autobiographical essays, Notes of a Native Son, which begins with a recollection of his 19th birthday, the same day his father died, and the same day his father's youngest child was born. Amidst a backdrop of racial and political tension, the essay clarifies with profound power what he is and what America is on his terms.

In each episode, we invite a well-known figure to choose a favorite or significant James Baldwin passage, and the conversation that ensues tells us as much about Baldwin's story as it does about the person who loves Jimmy as he was known to all who loved him. Our guest on this second episode of Notes on a Native Son is the civil rights lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson. He's been described by the late south african bishop and civil rights activist Desmond Tutu as America's Nelson Mandela. Bryan Stevenson is a man as dedicated to his chosen profession as James Baldwin was to his.

Given how busy Stevenson is, I knew it was a long shot getting him to say yes, but it was an almost immediate yes precisely because the invitation was to discuss James Baldwin, a writer and thinker who's had a profound influence on him. Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, which has not only transformed the conversation about the disproportionate numbers of incarcerated African Americans but has also challenged how we think about the criminal justice system and the treatment of children, in particular.

He initiated the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and continues to make us all think about the lived legacy of more than 200 years of slavery. When we invited Bryan to choose a Baldwin quote, he chose three. For him, we made an exception, and as you'll hear, we had an exceptional conversation.

Bryan Stevenson: Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

Razia Iqbal: Bryan Stevenson, thank you so much for agreeing to be part of this podcast. The quote that you've chosen is something that Baldwin said to The New York Times in 1962. Why did you choose this?

Bryan Stevenson: I think he recognized what a lot of people didn't recognize, which was the current challenge for civil rights that was sweeping across America in the early '60s and the late '50s was a challenge, a struggle that was rooted in a deeper history. He knew that the problems that were being confronted in the early 1960s were problems that began when Africans were first abducted, kidnapped, and trafficked to this country. It began with this racialized narrative that we created to justify enslavement of 10 million Black people. From 1619 until 1865, there were 10 million Black people were enslaved in this country. They were brutalized, they were abused, they were humiliated, they were insulted, they were violated. The worst part of that era was the narratives that were created to justify that enslavement because enslavers didn't want to think of themselves as indecent or unjust. They needed a narrative to help them reconcile with seeing Black women being pulled away from their screaming children, to see the violence that was being inflicted on women and men, to see the pain and suffering.

They created this false narrative that Black people are not as good as white people, that Black people are less human, less evolved, less capable. That narrative gave rise to this ideology of white supremacy, this narrative of racial hierarchy. Baldwin understood that what we were fighting in the '50s and '60s was rooted in a longstanding history of racial injustice. You weren't going to end racial bigotry and discrimination just by taking down the signs that said white and colored. We were focused on that.

I think Baldwin understood that we were going to have to face this entire history, this even more painful history of enslavement, of lynching violence, of terror that predates that period in the 1950s and '60s that was so dramatic. I think he recognized that a lot of people, both white and some Black, were really hesitant to take on all that that history carried. What he was saying for me was that we can't change that past, but we're not going to change the things that move forward until we face that past.

Razia Iqbal: I want to go back to get some idea from you about where you would locate your first relationship with Baldwin. When did you first start reading him?

Bryan Stevenson: Well, I have a very vivid memory of that. When I was a junior high school student, I made my first pennies working. I was cleaning yards or cutting grass or something, and I had my own little 2 or $3, and I felt so excited about that. I joined a book club where you pay like $3 and you get to pick 12 books a year or something like that. One of the books that I picked was Just Above My Head by James Baldwin. It created this relationship with his writing that just continued to shape my thinking.

I'd read Ralph Ellison. I'd read Richard Wright. I'd read the histories, books about enslavement and John Hope Franklin and et cetera. Baldwin was a storyteller that seemed to be dealing with the personal, with the intimate, and that was very different than the other books about the Black experience at the time, at least in my judgment. I felt deeply in love with his capacity for articulating feelings and emotions that no one had articulated in quite that way. He was an important voice in my head as a teenager.

From a very early age, he was an influential voice, shaping my perspective on the world around me.

Razia Iqbal: The quote in The New York Times, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced," it seems to me, also goes to the heart of the work that you have dedicated your life to. I'm reminded of that really quite devastating quote in your memoir, Just Mercy, in which you say, "I understood that I don't do what I do because it's required or necessary or important. I don't do it because I have no choice. I do what I do because I am broken, too." Explain that a little in the context of everything that we've been talking about so far.

Bryan Stevenson: I think one of the great things about Baldwin is that he was a courageous writer, and I think he's given me and a lot of other people the courage to be honest about what we do and the nature of our struggle and the nature of our journey. I've spent my whole life standing next to the condemned, the imprisoned, the marginalized. There's a lot of contempt when you advocate for people who are disfavored. People who are hated, people who have been vilified, people who've been reduced to their worst act. When you stand next to someone like that, when you're in that role, it's easy to get overwhelmed.

I didn't want to be dishonest about the fact that it sometimes is overwhelming, but despite the moments where you feel beaten and battered and even bloodied by the kinds of challenges that you have to face, there is something magical. There's something gratifying. There's something energizing. There's something beautiful by standing next to people who have been condemned and marginalized and mistreated and imprisoned and trying to harness the power of grace and mercy and love to create something better.

That's the real takeaway from my work. I often talk about how I've come to learn that we are all more than the worst thing we've ever done. That if someone tells a lie, they're not just a lie. If someone takes something, they're not just a thief. Even if you kill someone, you're not just a killer. You are more than your worst act. I think that idea comes through Baldwin's writings as well. He was compassionate, and he was prepared to be understanding even when people did things that were hard to understand. I think what he realized is that that journey, however, compassion is not always without cost.

It's not always without consequence. That's what I was trying to articulate when I described my own relationship to so much suffering, so much pain, so much brutality, so much violence that is represented in our criminal legal system. I think what's been inspiring to me is that there is this other side to it that is so energizing, that is so affirming in terms of what human beings can do for one another and mean to one another. I think the extraordinary thing about enslaved people in this country is that they learned to love in the midst of sorrow.

That's why I'm here. That's why many of us are here, is that despite the brutality and the violence, they still found a way to love. I think it's something worth celebrating, and so we're really excited that that's now part of the experience when people come to Montgomery, too.

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Razia Iqbal: Bryan Stevenson, we've asked everyone in this podcast to choose one James Baldwin quote. You chose three, and we're making an exception, so what's your next quote? We're going to talk about all three that you have chosen.

Bryan Stevenson: My next quote is a quote from Baldwin where he said, "And once you realize you can do something, it would be difficult to live with yourself if you didn't do it." I chose that quote because I'm so often asked, why do you do what you do? Isn't this whatever? I consider it such a privilege to do the work that I do, and I consider it such an honor to be able to make a difference in the lives of other people who are suffering more than I suffer. I've taken that to heart, and it has meant a lot to me to carry that idea through.

I think Baldwin understood, and I think that's why he was so unwilling to be silent when it would have been more convenient to not say some of the things. He was unwilling to be secretive about his identity. He was unwilling to compromise in a lot of ways that others of that era and generation did compromise. I think there's a real lesson in that. It certainly has been a lesson for me.

Razia Iqbal: He said what you have quoted, "And once you realize you can do something, it would be difficult to live with yourself if you didn't do it," in an interview in The Paris Review, and The Paris Review do these long interviews with writers, which are just rich with their process, the way they think, the way they are seen by the outside world. The question that he was responding to was about being a spokesperson for Black people. Baldwin said quite clearly he didn't see himself as a spokesperson. The very first time you and I spoke was in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, and we had done an interview on the BBC.

I was very mindful that that interview would not be a manifestation of you being a spokesperson, but just as somebody who was reflecting a moment and a moment that was to do with a reckoning, too. I suppose my question for you, in the context of Baldwin rejecting the idea of being a spokesperson and the burden on someone like you, who is continually asked to draw on your own experience but also represent something. Is that something that you think about?

Bryan Stevenson: I think, like Baldwin, I'm hesitant to say I'm speaking for this whole community because I understand this community well enough to know that it's complex and there's different perspectives. On the other hand, I think African Americans in this country, because of the history of enslavement, because of their history of violence and lynching, because of the history of humiliation which is represented by segregation, has been a community that has always valued Black achievement, because each time a person of color achieves something, they were pushing back against this false narrative of racial hierarchy.

When other intellectuals, W.E.B Du Bois or Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, when she fearlessly confronted terror, violence, and spoke truth about it, people in the African American community loved her for that. The same thing plays out throughout the 20th century. It's why Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, even if you weren't a boxing fan, when sugar Ray Robinson, these other great boxers, when they triumphed, it felt like the whole community triumphed. I think Baldwin understood that. He understood that his triumph as a writer meant something to Black people, many of whom may not have even read his work.

That carried with it an obligation to honor the pride that they felt when he succeeded. I don't take lightly what it means to prevail on behalf of my clients, to walk people out of jail and prison who were wrongly convicted, and to have a community of people to show up to celebrate that moment. I'm happy for my client, but I'm also happy for the whole community of people who often feel dispirited by the way this carceral state takes away their loved ones and the hopelessness that that can create.

For me, I think about it really in terms of hope, because I think if you have any space at all that you can use to provide hope for people, you need to do that. I think Baldwin understood that as well. That was the thing about Baldwin for me. He made me hopeful about what I might be able to say, I might be able to do. Even though I didn't think I had any of his talent or ability, he still represented something for me that I could see, that I could touch, that was accessible in a way that made me feel like, "Wow, I'm going to go push for something."

Razia Iqbal: Interesting to hear you talk about Black achievement and the figures that you mentioned. Of course, the pinnacle of African American achievement in this country was Barack Obama becoming president. You were involved in-- Well, before I even ask you about your involvement with the task force that Obama set up, I wonder if you'll just reflect for us a little in the context of a conversation that Baldwin had with Robert Kennedy about the possibility of an African American becoming president of the United States.

I think Kennedy was somewhat the way in which he engaged with Baldwin about this, was kind of saying that it may not happen in his lifetime, and so on, and Baldwin was taken aback by the idea that somehow the waiting had to be longer. How do you reflect on that moment in 2008?

Bryan Stevenson: It was interesting in 2008 to have a group of people, and I think that's what was so exciting to so many people say, yes, no, we refuse to wait. We're going to go vote for him. That was a moment of real triumph. It meant something. I think Baldwin was legitimately offended when someone says, you can't do that. Well, why not? At the same time, the need to push back against the idea that there are quick solutions to 400 [unintelligible 00:18:22] problems. Even in the civil rights context, I often complain that that era has been reduced to something that sounds like a three day carnival.

It's like people talking. It's like, well, on day one, Rosa Parks didn't give up her seat on a bus. On day two, Martin Luther King had a march on Washington. On day three, we changed these laws, and then racism was over. That's a gross misrepresentation of that struggle. We're still in struggle, which is why there is so much work to be done. Yes, I think that tension between those who say, wait, wait, be patient, be patient, and those who want to celebrate every act of progress as the end of the struggle are very real. I think Baldwin was sensitive to both of those dynamics.

Razia Iqbal: Tell us a little bit about that task force that Obama set up and the reason why that mattered to you, because I'm so mindful and aware of this idea that somehow the legal manifestation of segregation coming to an end clearly did not mean segregation came to an end, not least in the state in which you do all of your work in Alabama, the political structures are still geared towards maintaining a kind of segregation. That task force, what mattered to you about that?

Bryan Stevenson: What I was interested in when President Obama was in office, was this opportunity, through a task force, to take on what it means to confront a presumption of dangerousness and guilt that got assigned to Black and brown people, and the space in our nation where that presumption is most significant is obviously in the interactions between police and citizens. I have been pulled out of my car. I've had police officers pull a gun on me and threaten to blow my brains out. I have been stopped. I have been harassed.

I've got a law degree from Harvard Law School. I've got a bunch of honorary degrees. I'm an attorney. I've got a lot of things that some people would think would shield me from that kind of abuse, but--

Razia Iqbal: Misidentified in a courtroom, too.

Bryan Stevenson: Misidentified in a courtroom, yes, exactly right. Always mistaken for the defendant rather than the defense attorney. The reality is that until we are conscious of this presumption of dangerousness and guilt, and we work to confront it, we're going to see the kind of police violence that I think has tragically taken so many lives. For me to have an opportunity to begin talking about this narrative burden and what it means. The people in this country that should be most educated, most sensitive to unconscious bias, most prepared to eliminate racial bias, are the people who are in power to stop other people who are suspected of criminal misconduct.

It's the decision makers in courts, the judges, the prosecutors, that should be the people most trained, most prepared to eliminate bias and bigotry when it comes to administering justice because there can be no justice that is undermined by those dynamics. We were really just starting a process to engage that in a more formal way, and of course, it all was quickly undone when President Obama left office and President Trump came in and retreated entirely from some of those initiatives. I think it's regrettable, but we've carried on the work and we continue to do that work at EJI and a lot of other civil rights organizations as well.

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Razia Iqbal: We'll take a short break. More from Bryan Stevenson when we come back. This is Notes on a Native Son with me, Razia Iqbal. You're listening to Notes on a Native Son with Razia Iqbal. Bryan Stevenson, share with us your third and final quote that you have selected from your engagement with James Baldwin.

Bryan Stevenson: The third quote is, "It is certain in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."

Razia Iqbal: Baldwin wrote this in his essay, No Name in the Street. Why did you choose this in particular?

Bryan Stevenson: I think it just speaks to me in this moment because I think the politics of fear and anger are raging all across the world. Fear and anger are usually sustained by a kind of ignorance. It worries me when I look at the worst moments in human history. There are moments that have been defined and shaped by the politics of fear and anger. When ignorance is aligned with power, we've seen really horrific things. You can't understand the Holocaust that took place in Europe without understanding how this ignorance and this fear and this anger about people who are Jewish became aligned with a political regime that had the power to engage in the systematic violence that we saw.

The Rwandan genocide is a really heartbreaking example of what happens when ignorance gets empowered by people who have the opportunity to then take the lives and hundreds of thousands of people were killed. The great struggle that we face in the United States is that there's never been a shift in power as we've tried to confront our history. We're not like South Africa where power shifted at the end of apartheid because a Black majority took over. We're not like what happened in Germany, where the Nazis lost the war, which is why you see that architecture of reckoning in Berlin.

We're not even like Rwanda, where there was a military intervention that shifted who had power. The people who benefited from enslavement remained in power. The people who were never held accountable for lynching violence remained in power. The people who were advantaged by a century of disenfranchisement through Jim Crow never had to give up power. When you match that power with this ignorance, this desire to silence, when the enemy, the great fear we have to face in this country is truth telling about history, when becomes the narrative, then we are at great peril.

I am quite worried about the justice quotient in our nation right now because of these narratives, because this alliance between ignorance and power can be really, really destructive. I just think in many ways, I mean, obviously, Baldwin wrote this over 50 years ago, but I think it's quite insightful for the moment that we are in. That's why I believe it's just imperative that we all commit to confronting ignorance when it presents itself, that we commit to truth-telling.

Razia Iqbal: It's so interesting that you talk about justice quotient, because just before the quote that you have chosen, Baldwin writes, "If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected, those precisely who need the law's protection most." I understand entirely why you have chosen the quote that you have chosen.

I mean, it feels as though your relationship with Baldwin's concerns about not just the kind of emotional, visceral way in which the majority white population engaged with the minority African Americans, but the structures of power are the ones that interested him just as much.

Bryan Stevenson: Absolutely. I think that's why we can't be content with getting to the point where we don't use the n word or we support this entity, or we vote for someone who's a person of color. Those are not the markers of change, of equality, of justice that you need in a nation. As I said, I started my education in a colored school. When I went to law school, they put us in a small group, and they asked everybody in the small group. They were trying to make us comfortable. They asked everybody in the group, why are you in law school?

Everybody in the group I was with talked about how they were the son or the daughter or the grandson or the granddaughter of a lawyer. The whole time they were giving these explanations, I was panicking because I knew I wasn't related to any lawyer. About halfway through, I realized something that beyond that, I realized not only was I not related to a lawyer, I realized I'd never met a lawyer until I was at law school. When they got to me, I just told a joke. I didn't want to answer the question. I distracted them.

After the meeting, I called my mom. I said, "Mom, I don't think I belong here." My mother said, "What do you mean you don't belong there? You belong wherever you go. You're the smartest person in the world. You can do anything you want to do." My mom was wonderful. Then she said, "You need to go back and tell all of those kids while you're in law school." I hung up, and I felt better, but I also knew I wasn't going to go back and find all those kids. For two weeks later, I still felt uncomfortable. I thought, I'm starting my law school education in deceit. I'm not being honest. This is not the right road.

I did what my mom suggested. I actually found the kids in that little group, and I gathered them together, and I said, "Look, I didn't talk honestly on the first day, and I need to tell you why I'm in law school." What I told them is, I'm in law school because my great-grandfather was enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia, in the 1850s, and he learned to read while he was enslaved, because he had a hope of freedom so powerful, he was willing to risk his life to learn to read. There were anti literacy laws that made it dangerous for an enslaved person to read.

He could have been killed or sold, and yet he had that hope of freedom. After emancipation, my grandmother talked about how he would once a week, stand on the porch of their home and read the newspaper to people in the community who didn't know how to read so they would know what was going on. She said she loved the power he had just because he could read. She would push her siblings out of the way when he started reading. She said she would sit next to him and grab him by the leg and wrap her arms tightly around his leg because she wanted to learn to read.

She thought you learned to read by touching somebody while they read. He figured out what she was doing, and he said, "No, Victoria, I'll teach you how to read," and he taught her to read. My grandmother worked as a domestic her whole life, but she was a reader. We'd go visit her, and she would sometimes stand on the porch with a stack of books, and you'd have to read something before she would let you in the house. She was very tactical. She'd say, Bryan, what do you want for dessert? She'd make something fancy, and I'd go running toward the kitchen. She'd stand there with those stack of books. I'd have to read before I could get to that dessert.

I grew up in a poor, racially segregated community, but my mom went into debt when we were small children, and she bought us the World Book Encyclopedia, and we had those books in our house, and they were precious. Even though you didn't see opportunity outside the door, you could see it in these books, and she loved it when we were in these books. As a child, I didn't always understand it, because you're ten, and Christmas comes along, you go outside, and your friends are like, "Well, I got a buy a bicycle, and I got a basketball, and I got a baseball." I'd have to say, well, I got Volume G of the World Book Encyclopedia.

I told those kids at Harvard Law school, I'm here because of the hope of my mother and my grandmother and my enslaved great-grandparents. This hope of freedom that they had, they gave to me. I don't feel diminished at this law school. I don't feel unqualified. I don't feel disadvantaged. I feel like I've got something rich and powerful that will sustain me, and I did. That changed everything for me just having that relationship to that space.

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Razia Iqbal: Your engagement with Baldwin is so rich and fascinating to me. I wonder how proselytizing you are about him to people who maybe see him as somebody who encapsulates a quote for a moment, which happens all the time on TikTok, on Instagram, and so on. How much do you say to people, you must read this man?

Bryan Stevenson: Oh, I say it all the time. I represent a lot of young people who are incarcerated, and we've never charged anybody money for the representation we provide. With my young clients, I will often say, "I'm going to send you a book, and I need you to read it." Every time you read the book, I'll come and see you. Because they often want a lot of visitation because they're-- I think of them as not just clients, but they're like sons or nephews or whatever, and I'm happy to play that role. and so I'll send them books.

For many of my clients, sending them Baldwin is really exciting for me because a lot of them are dealing with some of the existential crises that he confronts in his writing. They're dealing with some of the identity challenges that he often talks about. They have similar backgrounds where they're trying to manage the confusing narratives that they've got from the people who love them in their family. I also believe that for a lot of young advocates, it's important to not misperceive what Baldwin was saying.

James Baldwin was courageous. He took risks. He put himself in situations that were challenge. It was hard for him, even during the civil rights era, to walk into a room with the identity that he had and feel entirely comfortable. It's really rare for him to find places, to go places where he could be totally comfortable. He spent time in Paris because I think he was looking for that. I say to young advocates all the time, don't just create spaces of entirely like minded people who reinforce everything about you and think that that's community, that we need to change the world.

There's so many wonderful things that have been the result of social media, but the one thing that I worry about is the way in which it's created just sort of echo chambers where people only take in the perspectives and attitudes, and ideas that they embrace. We see that in media as well, and it's a real threat, I think, to the kind of multicultural community and democracy that many of us want to live in.

Razia Iqbal: Given your engagement with Baldwin and how much you have turned to him time and again, do you have a memory of where you were, what you were doing, what you were thinking when you heard that Baldwin had died in 1987?

Bryan Stevenson: Yes, I do, actually. I was a young lawyer practicing in Atlanta, Georgia, at the time, and we'd been working on this major case, it's a seminal case in the death penalty space, McCleskey v. Kemp, it was a case involving a challenge to the death penalty, where evidence had been pulled together that established that you're 11 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than if the victim is Black. You're 22 times more likely to get the death penalty if the defendant is Black and the victim is white.

I knew Warren McCleski and I would go and spend time and talk with him, and we talked about the death of James Baldwin. He was a thoughtful man. Warren McCleski, tragically executed years later. He had never read him, and we talked about him. It was after James Baldwin died that I sent one of his books to a client, and it was the first time I had done that. That was really talking to Warren McClewski, who was on death row, whose case represents-- The great tragedy of that case is that the US Supreme Court held that they didn't question the evidence of racial disparity and bias.

They accepted the data. They just said, we can't grant relief, because if we grant relief to Warren McClesky, who's on death row, it's going to be just a matter of time before other people complain about racial disparities for other kinds of criminal sentences, the drug sentences, the property crimes, et cetera. I remember Justice Brennan, in his decision, wrote that the court was ruling against McClesky because of its, "Fear of too much justice." In a lot of ways that invoked for me the struggle of Baldwin is to get people past their fear that doing justice, doing the right thing, doing equality, is scary, given the history.

I remember talking with Warren McClesky about that after James Baldwin died and sending him a Baldwin book. I don't recall which book I sent, but I do remember I sent it to a client on death row in Georgia.

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Razia Iqbal: In some ways, and he says it himself at the end of No Name in the Street. This is an unfinished memoir for Baldwin. He says it can't be finished by him. I'm so mindful of not just the legacy that he leaves the world, but also that people like you are potentially the ones who can finish that story.

Bryan Stevenson: Yes. It's funny, as I get older, I find myself continually thinking more about the people who came before me. I didn't do this quite as much when I was a younger lawyer advocate, but these days, I think about them all the time. I'm here in Montgomery, Alabama. The generation that came before me would put on their Sunday best. They would go places to push for the right to vote, for the right to be treated justly. They'd be on their knees praying. They'd get beaten and battered and bloodied. They'd go home, wipe the blood off, change their clothes, and go back and do it again.

I'm so mindful of the fact that I stand on the shoulders of people who did so much more with so much less. There's a part of me that wants to honor them. That's sort of the way I think about all of these important people, these voices. James Baldwin is certainly high on that list. I think about what they had to endure to push justice forward, and I feel some obligation to continue pushing for them. When we put this monument up with the names of all of these formerly enslaved people-- I've been working on this for two years, and I was-- Every day I was there, they would add more content. They would add more content. Still on the day when they added my family name, Stevenson, I just broke down in tears.

It just tells me that there is power in connecting to these voices, these testimonies, these witnesses, these spirits that have created a way out of no way. I do feel like they're watching, and I want to, in my small, humble way, I want James Baldwin to be proud of the little bit that we're trying to do. Yes, we are trying to do it for all of the people who will come after us. It's no question about that.

I don't think there's any wrong in wanting to fight for justice, to achieve justice also for the people that come before you.

Razia Iqbal: Bryan Stevenson, it has been such a rich pleasure and privilege to hear you speak about James Baldwin and so much more. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you.

Bryan Stevenson: My pleasure.

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Razia Iqbal: Bryan Stevenson speaking to me, Razia Iqbal. This has been Notes on a Native Son, a new podcast about James Baldwin. In the next episode, we'll hear from the writer Siri Hustvedt. This podcast is brought to you by WNYC Studios and sponsored by the School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. It is a Sea Salt & Mango production, produced by Tony Phillips. The researcher is Navani Rachumalu. Lindsay Foster Thomas is the executive producer for WNYC Studios, and Karen Frillman is our editor. Original music is by Gary Washington. The sound designer and engineer is Axel Kacoutié. Special thanks to Dean Amaney Jamal of Princeton University.

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