Introduce the term “moral leader,” using this definition from leadership scholar John West-Burnham:

"Moral leadership cannot be taught; it is part of a process of personal development – an ‘intellectual and spiritual’ struggle that moves towards personal authenticity, intuitive understanding, and action based on a sophisticated model of personal meaning."

Peer Interview: In pairs, have students ask one another the following questions and take notes to keep track of their answers. 

    •    Who are current and/or historical examples of people you think of as moral leaders? 
    •    What qualities do they display that stand out to you as specifically ‘moral?’
    •    What influences do you believe inspire moral leaders to lead in the ways that they do?  

Teacher Note: The following film clips are excerpted directly from True Justice and reinforce the topic of moral leadership. 

Distribute Handout One: Story of a Leader Note Catcher in "Resources" section below. Ask students to review the Note Catcher before watching the clips so they are familiar with the questions. Invite students to write down their notes while watching, and offer a few minutes after each clip to complete their notes. 

Watch Clip 1: "Memory is Powerful" (runtime 4:45 min) in "Film Clips" section below.

In this introduction to the film and Bryan Stevenson, Bryan shares a painful memory of racism from his youth, and posits his belief that changing the way we remember our national legacy of racism can change the present and future or our nation.

Watch Clip 2: "Bryan’s Heart for this Work" (runtime 4:30 min) in "Film Clips" section below.

Bryan revisits the neighborhood where he grows up and reflects on the different ways his parents responded to racial segregation. He talks about how, when he entered Harvard, his childhood experiences made him feel separate from other students but later he found that his personal history was a foundation and an inspiration for his work with the Equal Justice Initiative.

Watch Clip 3: "I Feel Really Privileged" (runtime 4:20 min) in "Film Clips" section below. 

This clip shows the depth of his relationship to his clients, and demonstrates how the work of the Equal Justice Initiative is woven into every aspect of his life, and the gifts that life offers him.

Learning About Bryan Stevenson's Leadership Influences

In this exercise, students will learn more about three moral leaders who Bryan Stevenson names as inspirations for his life and work; Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, renowned Civil Rights activist Ms. Rosa Parks, and Congressman John Lewis. In small groups of three students, assign each student one of the three leader profiles contained in Handout Two.

Using the information in the handout, each small group will prepare to present information about their leader using these prompts:

*How do you see this person as a moral leader?

*What evidence do you see that Bryan and EJI were influenced by this leader’s work?

Teacher Note: The filmmakers conducted numerous interviews to produce True Justice with nine of these interviews free and accessible in the Interview Archive on the Kunhardt Film Foundation website. A selection of these interviews, edited together here to create interview threads, are available for your students’ learning. 

*Two interview threads were created for Lesson One for teachers and students to choose from, or use together, to deepen their understanding of the lesson topic. 

*Distribute Handouts Three and Four in the "Resources" section below so students can follow along with the interview transcripts. 

Handout Three: Bryan as a Lawyer

Handout Four: Bryan as a Leader

Watch the threads. Have students follow along on the transcripts, underlining details that catch their attention, and jotting down questions and insights that come to mind after viewing each thread.  

In Randy Susskind’s interview, we gain insight about who Bryan Stevenson is as a human being and how this translates into every aspect of his life.

Read this section of the interview again with students and discuss how they practice the virtue of kindness and compassion in their everyday lives. 

“Just being able to see the kind of person he is just generally makes you a better person when you're around people like that. I know that he'll go on a Sunday morning, when most of us are taking a break, he'll call me from the road, he'll be driving to a prison to see an old client. The client doesn't need a legal visit, it's just basically, he's just, as a friend, going to visit somebody just so they can get a visit. And if you visit someone in prison, you can buy them a soda or you can buy them a cupcake or something from the vending machine, and for some people, they don't get visits ever, and just watching Bryan do stuff offline just as part of his normal life just makes it so that you appreciate those kind of things in ways that you otherwise wouldn't. It just makes you a better person being around that kind of compassion.” - Randy Susskind, True Justice

Discuss:

*What can Bryan Stevenson and the work of the Equal Justice Initiative teach us about kindness and compassion in leadership? 

*What did you learn from this lesson about the different experiences, influences and ideas that shape Bryan Stevenson’s moral leadership? 

*What leaders or role models shape how you see the world? 

Ask students to choose one of the leaders who influenced Bryan Stevenson profiled in Handout Two and conduct additional research to learn more about them. Students will write essays about the life of the leader they chose, their moral leadership, and the legacy their leadership has offered to the nation and/or the world.