[Announcer] We now welcome our keynote speaker,
Professor Bryan Stevenson, clinical
professor of law at NYU School of Law
and founder and executive director of the
Equal Justice Initiative. [Bryan Stevenson] Thank you so
much. What a great thrill for me to be
here with you today. I've had the
privilege from time to time to give a
commencement address, but it's a special
day for me to provide a commitments, a
commencement to the students that I've
had the great privilege of being in the
classroom with at the university I've
been honored to work at for the last 20
years. It is a great honor for me to be
here with you today, and I want to add my
voice to congratulate all of you who are
in this place, because I've been in class
with some of you, I know how hard you've
worked, I know how sometimes it's been
difficult, I know how sometimes you've
had to struggle, but I also know that
there are no people on the planet Earth
more deserving to be here than you.
You've made the kind of commitment,
you've made the kind of effort, and there
are some things that I just want to talk
to you about before we leave this space.
The prophet Micah posed this question,
and he asked, "What does God require of us?"
And regardless of what you believe, I
think the answer he came up with has
meaning for us today. What Micah said is
that God requires of us that we do
justice, that we love mercy, that we walk
humbly. And I do think there's something
about this opportunity that now awaits
us that invites the question: How do we
do justice? I think you're going to get, 
you will get—I don't think, you will get—
a degree today, and your degree is
confirmation that you've studied hard,
that you've worked hard, but your degree
is also an invitation to change the
world,
to create more justice. And sometimes
it's easy to forget that this degree
empowers us to do things that that other
people haven't done, but I really hope
you don't forget that today, because we
need the world to change. My work is in
the criminal justice space. I've seen
some terrible things happen in this
country of the last half
Century. The prison population has gone from
300,000 in 1972 to 2.3 million today. We
live in this country in the nation with
the highest rate of incarceration in the
world. We've got 6 million people on
probation. There are 70 million people in
this country with criminal arrests which
means that when they try to get jobs or
loans are often disfavored. We've done
terrible things to women over the last
quarter century. The percentage of women
going to prison has increased 646
percent. 70 percent of the women we sent
to jails and prisons are single parents
with minor children. There are
communities in this country where people,
young boys and girls, are actually
expecting to go to jail or prison.
There's a statistic from the Bureau of
Justice that keeps me up late at night.
The Bureau of Justice now predicts that
one in three black male babies born in
this country is expected to go to jail
or prison during this lifetime.
One in three. That wasn't true in the
twentieth century when most of you were
born. It wasn't true in the nineteenth
century. It has become true, and there is
this need for more justice. I could talk
about the environment, I could talk about
the issues that we face when dealing
with global security, I could talk about
how we recognize and regulate these
challenges that are emerging, on how we
take care of vulnerable populations—the
poor, the elderly—but there is this
continuing question. How do we do justice?
I have some thoughts. I think to do
justice, we all have to find ways, no
matter whether we're going to be
corporate lawyers or tax lawyers or
public defenders or prosecutors, we all
have to find ways to get close to people
who are suffering, to get close to people
who are excluded, to get close to people
who are experiencing injustice, because
we today have the means, the power, the
tool to respond to that injustice. And if
we allow ourselves to get proximate to
those who are poor and suffering, those
who are marginalized, will discover some
things not only about the problems that
other people face, we'll discover
something about our power, our capacity
to do justice. There is power in
proximity, and a lot of us will make the
mistake of waiting until we're ready to
do something to make a difference, and
that's a mistake. You get ready in
proximity to the poor, and so I'm going
to say something to you that maybe other
people haven't said. A lot of people will
say to you—
if you live in a bad community, if you
live in a city with a bad community, if
you live someplace with 
neighborhoods where people are suffering
and struggling—a lot of people will say
to you, "Stay as far away from those parts
of town as possible." Today I'm going to
urge you to do the opposite. I think you
need to get closer to the people living
in your communities who are struggling
and suffering, and when you do that,
you'll understand the power of proximity.
This degree is enhanced and energized
and enlivened when you take it and get
close to people who are suffering and
struggling and excluded. I told the story
the other day. I grew up in a community
where black children couldn't go to the
public schools. I actually started my
education in a colored school when I was
a little boy. They didn't let black kids
go to the public schools. There were no
high schools for black children when my
dad was a teenager, and I remember when
lawyers came into our community to make
them open up the public schools,
enforcing Brown versus Board of
Education, and because those lawyers got
proximate to poor black kids like me, I
got to go to high school, and I have no
illusions about the fact that I wouldn't
be standing here if someone who
graduated from law school a long time
ago didn't take seriously this challenge
to get proximate and come into my
community and make it possible for me to
go to high school. I graduated from high
school. I got to go to college. Nobody in
my family had gone to college. I loved
college, but I was a really uncool
college student. I'm amazed at you all
because you're all so cool when I meet
you in class. You've learned something I
just didn't pick up on my growth when I
grew up. I kept doing these bizarre
things when I was in college. I would go
up to people, I wouldn't know what to say,
so I'd say something like, "Guess what? I
love college!" and I went into the
cafeteria one day, and I sat down and
these kids were sitting there, and they
were talking so comfortably I didn't
know what to say, so I interrupted them. I
said, "Guess what? I love college!" And then
I said, "I'm gonna spend the rest of my
life in college," and these people got up
and they just walked away. And I was
kind of alone for a lot, but I didn't
mind. I called my momma, I said, "Mama, I made a
decision, I'm gonna spend the rest of my
life in college," and my mom said, "You know,
Bryan, I didn't go to college, but I
don't think they're gonna let you do
that."
I said, "No, mama." When I was a philosophy
major in college so by the time I became
a senior I was busy thinking about, you
know, the deep thoughts that I thought
were
to be consistent with my study of
philosophy, and then one day somebody
came up to me and said, "You know you are
a senior, and you are a philosophy major.
What are you going to do when you
graduate from college?" and I heard this
as a very hostile question because I
realized nobody was gonna hire me to
philosophize, so I tried to figure out
how to stay in school, and because nobody
in my family had gone to school, I didn't
know what everybody here I'm sure
already knows. I didn't know that in this
country if you want to do graduate work
in history or English or political
science and to get admitted to graduate
school, you have to know something about
history, English, or political science. I
was very intimidated by this. I kept
looking and kept looking, and to be
honest, that's how I found my way to law
school. It was really clear to me, you
don't need to know anything to go to law
school. You don't. Now, you need to know a
lot to graduate from law school, but to
come to law school—and I was struggling when I
was a law student, I wasn't sure how to
take that skill and make it meaningful.
And then I got proximate to condemned
prisoners, I met people on death row, and
in that proximity I began to imagine
that maybe I could advocate for the
condemned. Maybe I could make a
difference in the lives of people
wrongly convicted, unfairly sentenced, and
in proximity to the condemned, all of a
sudden my law degree took on this magic
quality. It empowered me to literally
save someone's life, to make a difference
in someone's quest for justice, and that
same opportunity awaits you. And you
don't have to represent people on death
row, you don't have to work in the
criminal justice system, but no matter
where you go, no matter what you do, you
will have an opportunity to create
justice for people, and proximity is the
key to how you do it.
There are rewards in proximity. I don't
want you to be intimidated, I don't want
you to be afraid. I tell the story a lot, 
I talk about my grandmother a lot,
because I never met a lawyer until I got
to law school, and so I needed somebody
in my family who would represent this
idea of what an advocate might mean, and
that was my grandmother. My grandmother
was this powerful force in our family.
She was the classic African-American
matriarch. She was strong, she was tough,
she was intimidating. My grandmother was
the end of every argument in our family.
She had this judicious way of just
settling every dispute. My grandmother
was also the start of a lot of arguments
in my family, and I was telling the group
the other night, when I would see my
grandmother as a little child, she
was always doing these strategic things—
she would come up to me sometimes, and
she'd give me these hugs, and she would
squeeze me so tightly I thought she was
trying to hurt me. And then my
grandmother would let me go, and she'd
see me an hour later, and she'd look at
me, she'd say, "Bryan, do you still feel me
hugging you?" and if I said no, she would
jump on me again, and after a while I
learned as a very young child, whenever I
would see my grandmother, the first thing
I would say to her, "Mama, I always feel
you hugging me." and she'd smile.
And I didn't appreciate the power of
what she was doing until I got much
older. She worked as a domestic her whole
life. She got into her 90s, and she fell,
she broke her hip, she developed cancer,
and she was dying.
And I went to see my grandmother when
she was on her deathbed, and it was so
sad and heartbreaking for me to be there
with her, and I was holding her hand, I
was pouring my heart out, and it was time
for me to leave, and I stood up to go. My
grandmother's eyes were closed. I didn't
even think she could hear me, but as I
stood up to leave, my grandmother
squeezed my hand, and then she opened her
eyes, and then she said, "Bryan, do you
still feel me hugging you?" and then she
said, "I'm always going to be hugging you."
And no matter what you studied, no matter
what your interest is, no matter what
your focus has been at this Law School,
you have the capacity to get next to
people who are suffering, who
experiencing inequality and injustice,
who are abused, who are neglected, who are
struggling, and you can wrap your arms
around them, and when you wrap your arms
around them, you're not just anybody.
You've got this law degree that allows
you to make a difference in their quest
for justice. When we do justice, we have
to get proximate, but that's not going to
be enough. The second
thing I'm just really—you have to help
us do—we've got to change the narrative
in this country and around the world of
what justice requires. There are
challenges that we have to meet. We do, we
have mass incarceration in America
because we had politicians that were
preaching the politics of fear and anger.
We decided that people who are drug
addicted and drug dependent—we said
those people are criminals. We didn't
have to say that. We could have said that
drug addiction and drug dependency is a
health problem, but instead we said
they're criminal. We've locked up
hundreds of thousands of people, and the
reason why we did that, I think, has to do
with this politics of fear and anger. Our
politicians were saying, "Be afraid, be
angry." They were teaching us that we
should live in fear and anger, and when
you allow yourself to be governed by
fear and anger, you'll tolerate things
that you shouldn't tolerate. You'll get
comfortable with inequality and abuse
and mistreatment of other people, and we
have to fight against the politics of
fear and anger. Go anywhere, go
anywhere in the world, if you see people
being oppressed, if you ask the
oppressors why they're doing what they
do, they'll give you a narrative of fear
and anger, and I believe our commitment
to justice requires that we resist that.
I've seen what narratives can do. I have
been very committed to talking about
this narrative, this problem of race in
America. You see, I don't think we're free
in this country, I think we're burdened
by a history of racial inequality that's
in the air, it's like smog, and I want us,
genuinely want us to get to a place
where we can be free. There's something
better waiting for us, but we're not
going to get there if we don't talk
about these things that our predecessors
haven't talked about. I think we've got
to talk about the fact that we live in a
post-genocide society. What happened to
Native people on this continent was a
genocide. We came in, Europeans came here,
and they slaughtered native people by
the millions by famine and war and
disease, and they didn't call it a
genocide. They said no, those people are
different. They created this narrative of
racial difference, and that narrative is
what allowed us to get comfortable with
two and a half centuries of enslavement.
And I don't think the great evil of
American slavery was forced labor or
involuntary servitude. I really think the
true evil of American slavery was this
idea that we made up that black people
aren't
human. They're not like white people,
they're not evolved. In this narrative of
racial difference, this ideology of white
supremacy, that was the true evil of
American slavery. And if you read, if you
read, if you read the Thirteenth
Amendment, it talks about ending
involuntary servitude, it talks about
ending forced labor, but it doesn't say
anything about ending this narrative of
racial difference. Because of that, I
don't think slavery ended in 1865. I
think it just evolved, it turned into
decades where we had lynchings and
violence, and the demographic geography
of our nation was shaped by this racial
terror that took place when people were
being pulled out of their homes and
drowned and beaten and murdered, and many
of us haven't confronted that fact. Older
people of color come up to me sometimes.
They say, "Mr. Stevenson, I get angry when
I hear somebody on TV talking about how
we're dealing with domestic terrorism
for the first time after 9/11." They said,
"We grew up with terror, we had to worry
about being bombed and lynched." And the
demographic geography of this nation was
shaped by racial terror. The black people
in Cleveland and Chicago and Detroit and
Los Angeles and Oakland didn't go to
those communities as immigrants, they
went to those communities as refugees
and exiles from terror in the American
South, and that trauma continued and that
smog continued. We had a heroic movement
in the 1950s and 60s to create civil
rights, but even then that narrative
continued, and today it breaks my heart.
I'm so excited for each and every one of
you, but it breaks my heart to have to
stand here and tell you graduates of
color that it doesn't matter that you
have this law degree, it doesn't matter
how hard you've worked, you will go
places in this country and you're gonna
have to worry about being presumed
dangerous and guilty just because of
your color. And it's got to be something
that we continue to change, and so I want
to change that narrative. I think we have
to talk about the fact that we are in
this place. This past month we opened a
new national memorial. We call it the
National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
We opened up a museum that we call the
Legacy Museum from Enslavement to Mass
Incarceration, and what excites me about
these places is that I'm seeing all kinds
of people come, and they're struggling
with this history, and I believe we're
making small steps towards something
like freedom in South Africa. You can't
go there without confronting the legacy
of apartheid. Rwandans won't let you spend
time there without talking about the
genocide. In Berlin you can't go 100
meters without seeing a marker or a
stone that's been placed next to the
home of a Jewish family. The Germans want
you to go to the Holocaust Memorial
because they don't want to be thought of
as Nazis and fascists for the rest of
their generations. We haven't talked
about slavery, but we've got to stop that.
We've got to start talking about this
legacy, we got to start talking about the
gentle, we got to change the narrative on
race. Sometimes I think because we've
become such a punitive society, a lot of
us don't want to talk about the things
that have gone wrong in our history, the
problems that we've created, and a lot of
times we don't want to talk about it,
because we're afraid of being punished.
I'm not interested in talking about our
history because I want to punish America.
I'm interested in talking about our
history because I want to liberate our
country. There's something better waiting
for us, there's a kind of equality, a kind
of justice, a kind of harmony, a kind of
bridge that pulls people together that's
waiting for us, but we've got to change
the narrative,  we do. Third thing. We can't
do justice if we allow ourselves to
become hopeless. This is a such a hopeful
day, but I assure you that on the other
side of this day there will be things
that come at you that will try to take
your hope away, and you've got to fight
them. You cannot do justice, you can't
change the world, if you allow yourself
to become hopeless. In fact, I believe
that hopelessness is the enemy of
justice, and when you allow yourself to
become hopeless—I hate to say this, but
you've become sort of part of the
problem.
You're either hopeful or you're the
problem, and I say that because hope is
your superpower. Some of you had to have
a hope to even get to this law school to
graduate today. You understand something
about the dynamics of hope. Hold onto
that because hope has this ability to
make you do things you might not
otherwise do. I believe hope will get
some of you to stand up when other
people say, "Sit down."
Hope will inspire in some of you to speak
when other people say, "Be quiet." It is
transformative when a group of people
with your skills and talent stay
hopeful. There is nothing we can't do.
Your hope is key. Fourth and finally, we
can't do justice without this one more
thing—and this is a hard one. I don't
think we can do justice if we're
unwilling to do things that are
uncomfortable and inconvenient, and I
hate saying that because we all are
human, and humans like comfort. We're
psychologically and biologically
programmed to do what's comfortable, but
I'm a witness that we cannot create
justice if we only do the things that
are comfortable  and convenient. I've even
done research on this. I look for some
examples where justice prevailed, where 
equality triumphed or liberation was won,
and nobody had to do anything
inconvenient or uncomfortable. I can't
find any examples of that. And I'm not
against comfort, that's not what I'm
saying. I gave a talk in Mississippi the
people met with the airport, they said, "Oh
Mr. Stevenson, we know all about you, we
read your book, we know what kind of work
you do, we know what kind of lawyer you
are," and they said, "we we have to tell you
that we're having our conference at the
luxurious Doubletree Hotel." They said, "We
decided that you would not want to stay
at the luxurious Double Tree Hotel, so
we've asked one of the farmers to put
you up at the barn." I said, "What is wrong
with you?" I said, "Of course I want to stay
at the luxurious Doubletree Hotel.
I like those chocolate chip cookies just
like everybody else." That's not what I'm
talking about. No, what I'm talking about is
to do justice, we are all going to have
to sometimes position ourselves in
uncomfortable places, inconvenient places,
and we're gonna have to be a witness, and
it's hard. I've just warned you it's hard.
I've had the great privilege of
representing people in the criminal
justice system for 30 years. We've won a
lot of relief, we've won big cases and
helped children, and I've won cases where
people have been able to walk out of
prison after being wrongly convicted
sometimes after 30 years, and it's
priceless to see that kind of justice
made manifest, but I will also tell you
I've been in difficult places, painful
places. A few years back, we had a lot of
people facing execution in my state, and
we don't provide lawyers to people on
death row, and one of the challenges that
I hope some of you will help me and
others address is that we've got to do
something about the fact that in too
many places in this country, we have a
criminal justice system that treats you
better if you're rich and guilty than if
you're poor and innocent.
Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes. And
a man called, and he said, "I don't have a
lawyer. Will you please represent me?" He
was scheduled to be executed in 30 days,
and I got involved in this case. I
quickly learned that he suffered from
intellectual disability, and our courts
have banned the execution of people with
intellectual disability, and so I
immediately went to the trial court and
said, "You can't execute this man, he
suffers from intellectual disability," but
the trial court said, "No, it's too late,
somebody should have raised that issue a
long time ago." I said, "No, judge, it's not
too late. We can stop this execution."
The court said, "No, denying your motion," so I
went to the state court and the state
court said, "Too late." The appeals court
said, "Too late." The federal court said, "Too
late." The appeals court said, "Too late."
Every court said, "Too late." One of the
challenges in our law right now is that
we seem to have this priority for
proceduralism over fairness, and we've
got to challenge them. And so finally, it
was about an hour before the scheduled
execution, and I was waiting for the
ruling from the United States Supreme
Court. I was pacing in my office back and
forth, and finally the phone rang and it
was a clerk of court telling me that our
motion for a stay of execution had been
considered by the justices, reviewed by
the court, and their determination was
that our motion for stay of execution
was due to be denied—
too late. And that's when I had to do the
hardest thing I have to do in the work
that I do. I picked up the phone, and I
got on the phone with this condemned man,
and I said to him, I said, "I'm so sorry,
but I can't stop this execution." And then
the man did the thing that I fear the
most in my work. He began to cry within a
few seconds, he began to sob, and before I
knew it, I was holding the phone while
this man was just sobbing, and I tried to
figure out what to say, but I couldn't
think of anything, and then the man said
to me, said, "Mr. Stevenson, please don't
hang up. There's something really
important that I have to say to you." And
then this man tried to say something to
me, but in addition to being
intellectually disabled, he had another
challenge. When he got nervous, when he
got overwhelmed, when he got overcome, he
had a speech impediment, and he would
begin to stutter. And all of a sudden
this man could not get out a single word.
He kept trying to say something, he kept
trying to talk, but he couldn't get his
words out, and he kept trying, and he kept
trying, and he kept trying, but he kept
feeling
and after a while my heart was just
breaking. Before I realized it, tears are
running down my face. I'm standing there
holding the phone, and this man is trying
to get his words out, and he can't, and it
was so overwhelming that my mind
actually wandered. I remembered how when
I was a little boy, my mom had taken me
to church one Sunday. I was talking to my
friends at church that that Sunday, and I
was standing there, and there were all
these kids talking, but a little skinny
kid was standing there, not saying a word,
and I remembered, on the night of this
execution, turning to that little kid,
saying, you know, "What's your name? Where
are you from?"
And I remembered how that little boy
tried to answer my question, but he
couldn't get his words out either. He
also suffered from a speech impediment,
and he stuttered terribly, and then I
remembered that when that little boy
couldn't get his words out, I did
something really ignorant. I laughed, and
my mom saw me laughing at this boy, and
she gave me this look I'd never seen
before, and she came over, and she grabbed
me by the arm, and she pulled me aside,
and she said, "Bryan, don't you ever laugh
at somebody because they can't get their
words out right. Don't you ever do that."
And even at 10 I was a little bit of a
young lawyer. I was trying to defend
myself. I said, "Well, Mom, I wasn't sure
what was going on over there, it wasn't
clear to me whether what was happening
there, and I wasn't—" And my mom said, "No,
Bryan, you know better than that," and then
my mother looked at me. She said, "Now you
go back over there, and you tell that
little boy you're sorry." I said, "Okay, mom."
And I took a step and my mom grabbed me
by the arm. She said, "Wait. After you tell
that little boy you're sorry, I want you
to hug that little boy." I sort of rolled my
eyes. I said, "Okay, mom," and I took a step.
And then she grabbed me by the arm again.
She said, "Wait. After you've hugged that
little boy, I want you to tell that
little boy you love him." I said, Mom, I
can't go over there and tell that little
boy—" She gave me that look again, so I
said, "All right, all right."
and I remembered, on the night of this
execution, going over to this little boy
and walking up to him and saying, "Look
man, you know, well, you know, I'm sorry," and
then I remembered sort of lunging at him
and giving him my little boy version of
a man hug, and then I remember trying to
say to this child, as insincerely as I
possibly could, I said, "Look, man, you know,
well, I don't know, well, you know, well, you
know, I love you," and what I'd forgotten
was how that little boy hugged me back,
and then I remembered how he whispered
flawlessly in my ear, he said, "I love you,
too." I was thinking about that while this
man was trying to get
words out before the execution, and
finally my client that his words out, and
he said, "Mr. Stevenson, I want to thank
you for representing me, I said, I want to
thank you for taking my case." And the
last thing that man said to me, he said,
"Mr. Stevenson, I love you for trying to
save my life." He hung up the phone. They
pulled him away. They strapped him to a
gurney, and they executed him.
I held the phone, and I said I can't do
this anymore. It just was too much. It was
too overwhelming. And you will get to
these points where you just feel like
it's too much. And the question I had in
my mind is, "Why do we want to kill all
the broken people?" I kept thinking about
how broken he was and the question kept
forming and I kept thinking, "Why is it
that when we see brokenness, we want to
hurt it and crush it?" And then I realized
that all of my clients are broken people.
I represent the broken mic lines have
been broken by poverty, broken by neglect,
broken by bigotry, broken by disability,
broken, broken. And then I realized I work
in a broken system because sometimes the
people with power are unwilling to get
proximate. They're locked into narratives
of fear and anger, they've lost their
hope, they won't do uncomfortable things.
And in that moment I said I can't do
this anymore.
And I sat down, and I began questioning
why I do what I do, and it was in that
moment of agony that all of a sudden I
had this realization that shocked me. It was
in that moment of agony that I realized
why I do what I do and it shocked me.
What I realized that night is that I
don't do what I do because I've been
trained as a lawyer. I don't do what I do
because somebody has to do it. I don't do
what I do because it's about human
rights and justice—that's key, but it's
not the reason why I do it. What I
realized that night, I'd never realized
before. And what I realized is that I do
what I do because I'm broken, too. And the
truth is that we can't change the world,
we can't do justice, if we're afraid to
get close enough to suffering in an
equality that sometimes it hurts, and
I've actually become a different kind of
lawyer now, because I realize it's in
brokenness that we sometimes understand
how we get to justice. It's the broken
among us that can teach us the way
compassion is supposed to work. They can
teach us the way mercy works, They can
teach us the way justice works. It's in
brokenness that we appreciate the power
of redemption and rehabilitation, and
because I know I'm broken, I have no
choice
but to continue doing what I do. And I
tell you that because in those moments
of agony, I hope you'll still continue to
get proximate, change narratives, and stay
hopeful and do uncomfortable things. I've
learned really simple things doing the
work I do. I've learned that each of us
is more than the worst thing we've ever
done. I think for every human being. every
individual, they're more than their worst
act. That's why I defend the people I
defend. I think if someone tells a lie,
they're not just a liar. I think if you
take something, you're not just a thief. I
think even if you kill someone, you're
not just a killer, and justice requires
that we know the other things you are
before we judge you.
I'm also persuaded that in this country
and across the world, I don't believe the
opposite of poverty is wealth. Sometimes we
talk too much about money. I am persuaded
that the opposite of poverty is justice,
and when we do justice, we deconstruct
the conditions that give rise to
inequality. And finally, graduates, I hope
you will take seriously this idea that
we show our commitment to justice, we
honor this degree, we understand what it
means to be an advocate, not by how well
we treat privileged people and powerful
people and celebrated people—we're going
to have to show that commitment to
justice by how we treat the poor, the
neglected, the incarcerated, the
condemned. It's in that context that we
make justice real, and I say that because
I am persuaded that if we do justice,
there will come a time when the
graduates of this law school won't have
to worry about some of the things that
you have to worry about. You see we're
not there yet. We need to create a world
where no graduate of this law school who
is disabled has to worry about being
disfavored or excluded because of their
disability. We have to create a world
where no graduate of this Law School
who's a woman has to worry about sexual
harassment or violence in the workplace.
We've got to create a world where no
graduate of color has to worry about
being presumed dangerous and guilty. And
we can do it, we can do it, but to do it,
we're going to have to do justice. And so
my urge to you today, my call to you
today is that we understand the
challenge that faces us, that we find
ways to get proximate, that we find ways
to change narratives, that we stay
hopeful, and that we do uncomfortable
things. I'll end with this. There's a
different metric system if you try to do
justice, if you try to love
mercy, if you try to walk humbly—not
everybody is going to look at you the
way you'd like them to look at you.
Sometimes they'll look at you a little
askance, but I'm here to tell you that
you shouldn't worry about that. There's a
different metric system for people
trying to do justice, and for all of you
who have been through this law school, I
want you to understand today is a new
day. Don't ever think that your grades
are a measure of your capacity to change
the world, because they're not. I want you
to, I want you to understand that you're
gonna have great jobs, all of you, and
there'll be variation in income and the
kinds of jobs you have. And I'm glad, I
want everybody to be able to take care
of your family, but I also want to say to
each and every one of you, don't ever
think your income is a measure of your
capacity to change the world, because
it's not. There's a different metric
system. I tell this story a lot, I'll end
with this. I was giving a talk in a
church, and an older black man came into
the church when I was giving my talk. He
was in a wheelchair and he was staring
at me the whole time I was talking, 
this stern, angry look on his face. I
couldn't figure why is this man looking
at me so sternly. And I got through my
talk, people were very nice and appropriate,
but that older black man sitting in that
wheelchair just sat back there, and he
kept staring with the stern, angry look.
And finally when everybody else left, he
wheeled himself to the front of the
church, and he came down the center aisle,
and when he got it in front of me, he put
his hand up, he said, "Do you know what
you're doing?" And I stood there, and then
he asked me again, he said, "Do you know
what you're doing?" And I stepped back and I
mumbled something, I don't even remember
what I said. Then he asked me one more
time, he said, "Do you know what you're
doing?" and then that man looked at me
said, "I'm gonna tell you what you're
doing," and this man looked at me, he said,
"You're beating the drum for justice. You
keep beating the drum for justice." And I
was so moved. I was very, very moved—I was
also really really relieved, because I
just didn't know—and then this man
grabbed me by my jacket. He pulled me
into his wheelchair. He said, "C'mere,
c'mere, c'mere, I'm gonna show you
something."
And this man turned his head. He said, "You
see this cut I had behind my right ear?"
He said, "I got that cut in Greene County,
Alabama, in 1963, trying to register
people to vote." He turned his head. He
said, "You see the scar I have down here at
the bottom of my neck?" He said, "I got that
scar in Philadelphia, Mississippi, 1964,
trying to register people to vote." He
turned his head. He said, "You see this
dark spot?" He said, "That's my bruise, got
my bruise in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1965,
trying to register people to vote." He
said, "I'm gonna tell you something, young
man." He said, "People look at me, they think
I'm an
old man sitting in a wheelchair covered
with cuts and bruises and scars, so what
I'm going to tell you something," he said.
"These are not my cuts,"
he said. "These aren't my bruises," he said.
"These are not my scars," he said. "These are
my Medals of Honor." I believe, I believe
that we should take these degrees, each
and every one who can take these degrees
that we get here today, and if we find
ways to get proximate to those who are
suffering, if we find ways to change the
narrative, if we stay hopeful, if we do
uncomfortable things when the time
requires it, we can turn the degrees that
we earn today and we can turn them into
something else. At the end of your
careers, you'll be able to look at that
degree, and you'll know that it's a Medal
of Honor because you did something to
create justice in the world. And that's
what I want to celebrate, that's what I
want to acknowledge, that's what I want
to congratulate you on. You are now
agents of justice, and I hope you use
that agency to change the world. Thank
you all very much.
