“I believe we are all more than the worst thing we have ever done. We are a slave state but we are more than enslavers. We are a lynching state but we are more than lynchers. We are a segregation state but that’s not all we are. The other things we are create an opportunity to do things that are restorative, that are rehabilitative, that are redemptive, that create possibilities of reconciliation and repair. I get frustrated when I hear people talking about how if I have been living during the time of slavery of course I would have been an abolitionist. And most people think that if they had been living when mobs were gathering to lynch black people in the court house lawn they would have said something. Everybody images that if they were in Alabama in the 1960s they would have been marching with Dr.King. And the truth of it is, I don’t think you can claim that if today you’re watching these systems being created that are incarcerating millions of people, throwing away the lives of millions of people, destroying communities, and you’re doing nothing.“I think that there’s something better waiting for us in this country, than another century of conflict and tension, and burden ‘cause we won’t face the legacy of our past. I think it’s important that we understand all the brutal, all the ugly details, ‘cause those are the things that actually give rise to what might allow us to one day claim something really beautiful.”。

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