Welcome back to Three Things.

In a moment where politics and division feel relentless and optimism feels scarce.

Here's an encouraging conversation with Harvey Gant, an iconic architect, a civil leader, the first black student to attend Clemson University, and the first black mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Growing up in the segregated South, Harvey's life experiences and his

perspective about the progress we have and haven't made toward racial justice somehow managed

to be both a severe reality check and a shining beacon of hope. Listen to the end for his

advice about how we can all push for real progress from our leadership and how we all can have

more hope for the future. And then, please make a plan to vote.

In a production note, you might notice that the audio quality on these episodes are a little

bit less than they usually are.

Please bear with us as we're trying to do all this over Zoom now.

This is three things with Harvey Gant.

It's great to see you, Harvey.

Good to see you, too. Thank you for doing this. Listen, Harvey, we, we as an organization, as you and I have talked, I've been on a journey, on a long-term journey to do our part to really make this world the place that we will like it to be.

And this is a really serious commitment that's going to take time.

So the goal of today really is to get to know you, but to use your wisdom in your experience

to educate us further on a number of issues.

I want to go back. It is amazing to read

that you're the first black student at Clemson, but I'm sure it didn't feel amazing as you

decided to apply or as you showed up and you, you know, were so different than everybody else

there. First of all, what made

you want to break through that wall into what was it really like being that unique in a setting

...