attorney and activist bryan stevenson.tor of the equal justice initiative. >> thank you. it's great to be with you, reverend. >> in your work of dealing with those that are wrongfully incarcerated, of those that have been sentenced beyond what is equal to what they have been charged with and in many cases charged and convicted wrongly, this is a major part of this documentary. why is this the particular work you have put your life efforts for and how bad is it so that average viewer watching this understands that this is not being soft on crime, it's being hard for justice. >> yeah, well, i think when we were young kids the threats we had to overcome had to do with segregation and blatant racial inequality, bear iers to education, all of these threats. those threats still exist today but there's a new threats and that's mass incarceration. we have 300,000 people in jails and prisons in the united states in 1972. today we have 2.3 million people in jails and prisons and nothing has disrupted the lives of poor people and peo

and that's the genesis behind this effort that we're now engaged in. >> bryan stevenson joins us at the just had to sit for a second because it's so powerful. it's so painful. but it's so important for people to hear. i think it's a must see view for everybody, black, white, br anybody with a beating heart. one of the things that stood out for me, as you said, we've got to confront the brutal, ugly truth of the history of our country. and tell us exactly what you mean by that. >> yeah, i don't think we've really ever talked about the hardship, the legacy of enslaving black people for 2 1/2 centuries. we've just never dealt with the details of that. because we didn't we didn't understand the significance of that. >> what are the details you think we should know? >> we need to understand the greater evil of american slavery wasn't involuntary servitude and forced labor, it was this idea that black people aren't as good as white people, that they're not fully human. the supreme court said we're three fifths human and that created this ideology of white supremacy we never addressed. the nor