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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with

your host David Axelrod.

This has been such an awful, wrenching week in America, the horrendous murder of George

Floyd and the aftermath that has torn our country apart.

It seemed an appropriate time to share with you a conversation that I had back in late

2018 with Brian Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative who spoke powerfully

and compellingly about the impact of our unresolved legacy of racism and our unwillingness

to confront it.

Here's that conversation.

Brian Stevenson, it is an honor to be with you, to have you here at the Institute of

Politics and here on the podcast.

When people think of Milton Delaware, they don't think of it as a segregated place, but in

the early 60s, when you were growing up there, there were still vestiges of segregation in

your hometown.

Yeah, I think the Eastern Shore is not well understood.

I grew up in what we call the Del Marver Peninsula.

It's the southernmost county of Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia.

And of course, that was a huge space during the 19th century for enslavement.

There were large slave populations there.

And Delaware, of course, was a border state.

It was promised that it could keep it enslaved people if it stayed out of the Civil War.

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