Oprah:

Change, however, is possible. I think it’s important to bring up a conversation I had in 2018 that confirmed my belief that through compassion, there is hope for even the most racist person to evolve.

I spoke with a man named Anthony Ray Hinton, who’d spent thirty years on death row in Alabama for a crime he didn’t commit. The prison setup was extremely isolating–just him alone in his cell, visible to see any of the other inmates on the row with him. No one ever really talked to each other, but at night you could hear crying and moaning–men in pain.

One night, Anthony heard someone crying and something inside him shifted. He called out. “What’s wrong?” And the man told him that his mother had died.

Now, Anthony was extremely close to his own mother, and in that moment, he empathized. And that one question, that act of compassion, opened the door for all the men. They began talking to each other regularly, sharing stories, giving each other support. Anthony became particularly friendly with a man named Henry. And he eventually learned that his friend Henry was Henry Hayes, a member of the KKK who’d ben imprisoned for hanging a young Black boy. But instead of cutting him off and ending their friendship, Anthony formed a bond with him on death row, and they remained close friends.

Dr. Perry:

I would bet that by doing that, Anthony was able to also change Henry.

Oprah:

So much so that on the night Henry was electrocuted, his last words were that all his life, he’d gotten it wrong. His parents had taught him wrong, that Black people were the enemy. And he’d had to come to death row to learn what love was.

–from What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey