[CLOCK TICKING]
Good job.
It's rare for 60 Minutes to follow a story for 15 years.
But tonight, you'll be reintroduced
to Jennifer Thompson, a rape victim who
mistakenly identified an innocent man, who
was sent to prison.
And then I'm going to tie my string.
Jennifer has created something called Healing Justice,
a program that brings together crime victims, family members,
and innocent men.
"Dear Chris, you've failed in life.
Why did you confess?
I would never have confessed."
"Why can't you just be quiet"?
"You are a angry Black man.
You will never know love.
You will always be a prisoner."
[BREATHES DEEPLY]
[CLOCK TICKING]
I'm here because I thought I want
to be a part of a better world for our children
and our grandchildren.
Yeah.
I can't save the whole world, but I can do my part.
What would happen if you put Americans
from opposite sides of the political spectrum
across from one another and asked them to talk?
Have a look at something called One Small Step.
People feel misunderstood and judged.
In the history of humanity, nobody
has ever changed their mind by being
called an idiot or a moron or a snowflake.
[CLOCK TICKING]
I'm Lesley Stahl.
I'm Bill Whitaker.
I'm Anderson Cooper.
I'm Sharyn Alfonsi.
I'm Jon Wertheim.
I'm Norah O'Donnell.
I'm Scott Pelley.
I'm Cecilia Vega.
Those stories in a moment, but we begin with President Biden's
historic decision to step down as the Democratic candidate
for president, bringing an end to his 50 year political career.
Mr. Biden made the announcement this afternoon in a letter
to the American people, saying, quote,
"while it has been my intention to seek reelection,
I believe it is in the best interest of my party
and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely
on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder
of my term."
The president offered his full support and endorsement
of Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him
at the top of the ticket.
Whether another Democrat steps forward to oppose her,
or the 59-year-old former Senator from California becomes
the nominee, will be determined at the Democratic National
Convention next month.
This evening, Vice President Harris released a statement,
saying she intends to win the nomination and, quote,
"defeat Donald Trump."
Questions about 81-year-old President Biden's age and mental
acuity erupted in the weeks following his debate in June
against former President Trump.
Nearly 40 congressional Democrats publicly
urged him to drop out, and supporters put a hold
on tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions.
The president remains in Delaware tonight
as he recovers from COVID.
No sitting American president has ever quit the race so late
in the election cycle.
[CLOCK TICKING]
15 years ago, we reported on a woman named Jennifer Thompson,
a rape victim who was devastated to learn years after her assault
that she and the police had identified an innocent man who
was convicted and sent to prison, while the actual rapist
had gone on to attack several more women.
Not an uncommon story in this era of DNA
exonerations, and Jennifer Thompson
has tried for years to do something about it.
Thompson knows firsthand that wrongful convictions
scar not just the unjustly convicted,
but also the original crime victims, who
are often overlooked.
As we first reported in March, she's
doing something no one else has tried,
and perhaps only she could pull off, bringing together
crime victims and innocent men, from different cases, for what
she calls healing justice.
What I'm going to ask you to do is turn your bowl upside down.
What we saw on day one of a multi-day group retreat
Jennifer Thompson is leading sure didn't look like healing.
10 men and women, plus an observer--
Nice job, Lesley.
--smashing bowls with a hammer.
Nice.
What I'm going to ask you to do now
is I'm going to ask you to repair it.
It was quite something to realize
that gluing pieces back together at one table
were two women who had been raped at the ages of 15 and 12
sitting across from two men who, in unrelated cases,
had been wrongfully convicted of sexually assaulting children
and had each spent more than two decades in prison.
Anyone need a little blob of glue?
At the next table, another woman who
survived a sexual assault sitting beside a man
exonerated for rape and murder.
And at our table, the partner and daughter of a murder victim.
Everyone here, part of a case where the wrong man was sent
to prison for years and years.
You have said that wrongful convictions
aren't a single bullet.
Mm-hmm.
You said they're bombs.
Mm-hmm.
A wrongful conviction doesn't hurt like a person.
It's not just Raymond Towler got hurt.
His whole family got shrapnel, and the victims got shrapnel.
And the community received shrapnel
because a child molester was still in the community.
There's just so many people in a wrongful conviction case.
In one case.
I think it's hundreds of people for every single wrongful
conviction case that are hurt.
Jennifer Thompson was one of them.
She was a college student in 1984
when a man broke into her off-campus apartment
and raped her at knifepoint.
Jennifer worked with police to create a composite sketch,
then identified a man named Ronald Cotton in the photo
and physical lineups police showed her.
Jennifer testified in court against Ronald Cotton
and was relieved when he received a life sentence.
But after 11 years in prison, DNA testing
proved Cotton's innocence and identified
the actual rapist, whose photo had not been in the lineup.
[APPLAUSE]
Ronald Cotton was exonerated, and Jennifer
was wracked with guilt, as she told us in 2009.
Shame?
Shame.
Terrible shame.
Suffocating, debilitating shame.
Jennifer turned that shame into action.
She apologized to Ronald Cotton in person
and then started speaking around the country
to police and prosecutors, sometimes together with Cotton,
about how to make wrongful convictions less likely.
[FAMILY MEMBERS SCREAMING IN JOY]
But over the years, as exonerations of the innocent
have multiplied--
Finally we're free.
--with more than 3,500 freed so far--
I'm free!
--based on new evidence, including DNA,
Jennifer began focusing in on what was being overlooked.
What do you think most people feel and see
when they see an innocent man come out of prison?
[APPLAUSE]
It's the day that that man or woman who's wrongfully
incarcerated, and their families are rejoicing.
I know you didn't do it.
I know.
It's the day they've been dreaming about,
they've prayed for it.
[CHEERING]
They're on the court steps, and their arms are raised high.
And it's a day of celebration.
But for the crime victims, for the murder victim family
members, they're sitting back here saying, hey,
hold up a second.
This is another nightmare on top of a nightmare.
The victims have been forgotten.
Victims, she says, like Tomeshia Carrington Artis,
who was 12 years old when a man broke into her bedroom
and raped her.
He grabbed me by my throat and put a knife to my throat
and said if I scream, he was going to kill me and my mom.
Grabbed me from behind, put me in a chokehold--
Penny Beernsten, sexually assaulted at age 36
as she went for an afternoon run along the shore of Lake
Michigan.
And he said, now I'm going to kill you.
Now you're going to die.
And Loretta Zilinger-White, who was raped at age 15
on the way to school one morning after she'd missed her bus.
It's hard.
People expect you to just put it behind you
and not think about it again.
And they don't realize that it's going to affect you
for the rest of your life.
All these women, like Jennifer, had identified
a suspect the police showed them only, to learn years later
that those men were innocent, and they were gripped
by a whole new nightmare.
I felt so bad for him, because I felt
like I sent this man to prison.
That's all I could think about.
I got scared.
I felt like-- that he was going to try to come out and kill me.
I shut down.
Did people blame you?
Oh, absolutely.
The first time I went out in public, a friend came up to me
and said, I can't believe you're showing your face.
They were saying that I needed to go to prison.
That you needed to go--
Yes.
That I intentionally sent the wrong man to prison.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah.
It was bad.
Yeah.
Memory experts have long understood how
crime victims can get it wrong.
In our earlier story about Jennifer's case,
Professor Gary Wells showed us a simulated crime scene and then
a lineup.
Now you know now, after we've talked, probably
not to pick anyone.
No.
I actually know who it is, because if I had--
Yeah, who is it?
--come upon that--
I think it's this guy.
Am I wrong?
Yeah.
I'm wrong?
Yeah.
It's none of them.
[GASPS]
Studies have shown again and again,
when the actual perpetrator is not in the lineup,
witnesses often picked the wrong man,
who then comes to replace the original offender
in their memory of the crime.
In Jennifer's case and, Tomeshia and Penny's,
the real perpetrators, revealed by DNA years later,
had not been in the original lineups.
20 years later, when they come to me and say, by the way--
Oh.
I can't imagine.
--the person who raped you never went to prison.
And the person we thought is innocent, see ya.
And, oh, by the way, it's all your
fault. It's not the system's fault. Here was my narrative--
"rape victim falsely accuses an innocent man and sends him
to prison."
Everything's wrong with that.
Because a false accusation denotes a lie.
Deliberate.
Why would a crime survivor, why would a victim,
want the wrong person to go to prison?
That doesn't make any sense at all.
When you hear what you're saying, then we get it.
But we don't hear it.
As you said, there's a blazing headline.
"Man is freed.
Person who fingered him got it wrong."
That's it.
And the system now doesn't get held accountable for how
it failed me.
And it failed my family, and it failed the innocent person.
And it failed the innocent person's family,
and it failed everybody.
That failure, Jennifer told us, is also
devastating for families of murder victims,
even when they played no role themselves
in identifying the wrongfully convicted person.
That's what happened to Andrea Harrison and her father,
Dwayne Jones.
Andrea's mother, Jacqueline, was raped and murdered in 1987,
when Andrea was just three years old.
It was one of the most horrendous crimes.
She was brutally raped, tortured.
Someone found her body, walking the dog.
A local man named Larry Peterson spent more than 17 years
in prison for the crime before DNA testing proved
his innocence, and he was released.
Did you know that he was going to be released?
Did they tell you?
No.
For many, many years, someone was tried, convicted,
and put away.
Yes, ma'am.
And then you find out that the DNA doesn't match.
You go back into fight or flight.
Yeah.
You got scared?
Absolutely.
Absolutely we did.
Can you tell us of what?
Who hurt my mother?
What happened to Jackie?
Who did it?
Whoever that person is, they're still out there.
But since Larry Peterson's exoneration,
with the case now cold, they feel
the original crime and victim have become an afterthought.
It's always been, what do you think about Mr. Peterson?
That is not my charge.
I care about Jackie.
I'm worried about Jackie.
What about Jackie?
But even while victims and their families
are left reeling in the wake of wrongful convictions,
Jennifer knows from her friendship with Ronald Cotton,
and her work with other exonerees,
that heady, blissful first day of freedom
is just the start of a tough, years-long struggle to rebuild.
(SINGING) Only freedom matters
Raymond Towler, exonerated after 29 years in prison, 29 years,
plays in a band with other exonerees
and says he struggles with the lingering stigma
and hurt of being charged with such a heinous crime.
Tell us, if it's not too painful, what the crime was--
It's painful.
I know.
I'm sorry.
I'm laughing over it, but it is painful.
But it was rape of 11- and 12-year-old kids.
[APPLAUSE]
When DNA testing finally proved Towler's innocence
and won his freedom, he says it was thrilling,
but also daunting.
The adjustment was difficult?
Yeah.
I couldn't even really go out the door by myself.
You don't feel like you fit in anywhere, at least I didn't.
Exonerees' stories are often filled with egregious police
and prosecutorial misconduct.
In Chris Ochoa's case, abusive interrogations that
led to a false confession to rape and murder.
For Howard Dudley, evidence withheld
by prosecutors that likely would have cleared him
of child sexual abuse, for which he served more than 23 years.
I always dreamed of being there with my kids,
see the football game, see them on the basketball court.
Didn't get a chance to see none of that.
So I would like for everybody to introduce themselves.
So Jennifer came up with a novel idea.
So I am Jennifer Thompson.
I am a victim-survivor.
My name is Raymond, Raymond Towler.
I'm an exoneree.
My name is Loretta.
She started an organization, called Healing Justice,
that brings together exonerees--
My name is Chris.
I'm an exoneree.
--and crime victims--
My name is Penny.
--all from different cases--
I am Tomeshia.
--as well as family members.
My brother was an exoneree.
My name is Andrea.
Healing Justice paid to bring them
from around the country to this rented retreat
center in Virginia, where they will spend three days
sharing stories, playing games--
[LAUGHTER]
--and eating all their meals together.
This is the 17th retreat Healing Justice has done.
How effective is it when it's not the same crime?
Very effective.
There's something powerful and healing
when an exoneree can hear what the victim in their case
must have felt like.
And for crime survivors, it's really
healing to also hear about the experiences of exonerees.
The biggest thing I lost was trust.
Three days of emotional release, rebuilding trust,
and healing when we come back.
[CLOCK TICKING]
Jennifer Thompson's goal when she
created the nonprofit organization Healing Justice
in 2015 was to help all groups harmed by wrongful convictions.
Healing Justice now advises prosecutors' offices
around the country on dealing more effectively
and empathetically with crime victims in exoneration cases.
And they've recently gotten a grant
from the Justice Department to expand those efforts.
But it's what they call the healing side of their work
that is most meaningful to Jennifer.
She did coursework in trauma recovery
and worked with psychologists to design a program
to safely bring together victims of crime and exonerees.
They work in small groups on the wounds left
behind when the justice system gets it wrong.
Nice.
Remember the breaking and gluing back together of those bowls?
Did anybody notice how fast and easy it was to break it
and how hard it is to put it back together again?
That was just the start of this retreat's opening exercise,
and perhaps a metaphor for the whole endeavor.
So what I'm going to ask you to do now
is to paint your broken places with gold.
This is actually 24-karat gold paint.
She told us it's called kintsugi.
Kintsugi.
Mm-hmm.
What is that?
It's the Japanese concept that even in our broken places,
we're still beautiful.
Because we're strong at our broken
places, and we're not disposable.
But before they can paint their real wounds with gold,
they have to look hard at the breaks that need repair.
I lost part of my heart.
So sitting in a circle, using a rock
to give whoever holds it the floor,
and with a Healing Justice social worker always present,
they talked about their losses.
I lost believing in myself.
I had so much confidence.
I had so much.
That first slamming the doors, everything got real right then.
I seen people suicide, death by cop, just getting beat up,
killed.
It all comes back.
And I have to keep reminding myself, right here,
I'm in the present, right now.
The hardest part for me is hearing what the exonerees
went through in prison.
It's so hard to hear, but it's so necessary.
So what I want to do today is--
On day two of the retreat, Jennifer led an exercise
on how the harsh words used against each of them
end up becoming internalized.
You might have been called a liar.
You might have been called a rapist.
And those words really do take on a life of their own.
I'd like for you to write a letter to yourself,
from the space of the critical mind, that loop that
plays in your head over and over again.
You had them write letters.
What was the purpose?
I've done this before.
When they're writing it, they're not happy.
And then I had them read it out loud to the circle.
They didn't like it.
"Dear Chris, you've failed in life.
Why did you confess?
I would never have confessed."
"Why can't you just be quiet?"
"Dear Raymond, you are an angry Black man.
You will never know love.
You will always be a prisoner."
And then there was Loretta's.
"Dear Loretta, you deserved to be raped and beaten.
You really don't deserve to be alive.
You aren't brave nor strong.
You are a failure as a woman and a mother"
Loretta, Jennifer told us, faces one of the most excruciating
situations for a victim in an exoneration case--
when the DNA clears one man but doesn't identify
who the actual assailant was.
I'm stuck.
She told us she relives the assault daily
and can't get the exonerated man's face out of her memory.
So even though he was cleared through DNA,
his face is still there?
Yes.
The DNA said it wasn't him.
[SNIFFLES]
You didn't believe it.
No.
I feel guilty.
Because I feel like I did something wrong.
So you're having both the feeling that he was the one
and that you did something wrong.
Yes.
Oh, my god, you really are stuck.
I don't know who did this.
For Andrea Harrison, whose mother's killer
also remains unknown, it's a familiar struggle.
What was told to me was that he was the person who
murdered my mother, and so that was a belief of mine
for a lot of years.
I can't get that out of my head.
On his side of it, that's sad.
It is sad.
The justice system failed him, just like it did us.
Yeah.
Until now, Andrea and her father had not
been willing to attend a retreat with exonerees present.
Do you think that the exonerated person and the victim
are almost pitted against each other when they shouldn't be?
They're both victims of the same perpetrator,
who knows someone sitting in jail for what he or she did.
That's right.
At the end of the day, when an innocent person is in prison,
a guilty person is not.
We should all be concerned about that.
And maybe they go off and do it many more times.
In my case, the person who wasn't caught
committed six more first-degree rapes
before he was ever apprehended.
I just love that we're here, working on this.
In the circle, after reading the critical letters,
Jennifer turned the tables.
So I want you to write a second letter now to yourself
from the self-compassion voice, the voice
that you would use for the person you love the most.
So they rewrote it.
They did?
They turned it--
Oh, yeah.
And then they read that out loud, and their faces--
they smiled when they read it.
"Dear Raymond, you have a kind heart.
You are loved.
Raymond, your dreams have come true,
and you are free to dream more and create."
"You are a great mother, grandmother, wife, daughter,
sister, friend, and so on and on.
Keep going.
You got this."
"I've seen you stumble, and I've seen you bounce right back."
"Dear Loretta, you know that it's never
too late to follow your dreams.
You should never stop believing in yourself.
You didn't deserve to be hurt by anyone or anything.
I will always be your biggest fan and supporter.
I love you."
Well, that was different.
So why is it that we speak to ourselves in a way
that we would never speak to the people that we love?
Something I need to change is that it was actually harder
to write the happy letter for me.
I do believe the good things about myself,
but I don't think I really say them to myself enough.
And the reality is, if we really want to do good in the world,
hating ourselves serves nobody at all.
Who's ready?
After two emotion-filled days came a scene
we weren't expecting.
Catch it.
The group gathered together for improv games--
Ribbit.
--acting like animals--
[IMITATES BIRD SQUAWKING]
[IMITATES MONKEY CHATTERING]
--smiling and laughing.
[LAUGHTER]
[IMITATES WHALE MOAN]
You play a lot of games.
Well, the games are just really a way
of inviting that child to come back and play again.
If you feel safe, you can pretend like you're a monkey.
[IMITATES MONKEY CHATTERING]
[LAUGHTER]
You can do all kinds of ridiculous things,
and it's OK, because everybody else is doing it, too.
I know, but don't you feel guilty.
We noticed a loosening and connecting later that night
over an art project, the kind of impromptu conversation Jennifer
says this retreat is all about.
How can somebody look at me and think
that I would do something so heinous like that?
That's part of the trauma for me.
When you hear some of our stories, do you ever blame us?
Me being a exoneree and--
Yeah.
Do you ever see yourself blaming the victims for--
You didn't do anything wrong.
It's not your fault.
The next morning, as they gathered in the circle
for the third and final day--
I feel blessed.
I feel light as a feather.
--the mood had shifted dramatically.
I feel open.
I feel courageous.
I feel nurtured.
Even though it's painful to let it out,
I think you guys do it because it's
going to help the next person.
And it has.
So how did the retreat go?
Very enlightening.
Very powerful.
We took off the mask that everybody sees.
What questions did you ask each other, exonerees to crime
victims and back around?
I asked, what happened to you?
And everyone was honest.
And everybody was honest.
Right away, I shook Mr. Howard's hand.
And I feel for this man and my other two friends
back there that are exonerees.
I see it now, because we only looked
from our side of the table.
We never seen it from their side.
I had that fear, even when I came here.
I didn't know if I'd be coming into hate because I
was exoneree.
Because nobody believed me for 30 years.
I think we believe it.
Thank you.
[LAUGHTER]
We do.
I have questions myself for an exoneree.
And I was able to build up the courage to even ask Raymond,
because I still hold this guilt. And I was finally
able to let it go after talking to him.
I knew he was speaking from his heart.
And it took 30 years for him to let me get that guilt off of me.
Wow.
I thank you.
May you keep spreading your love to everyone that needs it.
So as the retreat drew to a close,
they clasped hands and shared wishes for one another.
Penny, may you continue on your journey of healing.
What happened in your case that allowed you to heal?
I think I'll always be healing.
But I think what has helped me more than anything
is the relationships I've built along the way
with people that have been harmed and hurt just like me.
Because you're helping other people.
Jennifer, may you always be in our lives and may
you always be courageous.
I'm helping other people, but what they don't realize
is they're also helping me.
[LAUGHTER]
I didn't know that move.
They're healing.
They are healing.
And I want to walk with them on that journey.
Whoo-wee!
[CLOCK TICKING]
Tonight, you'll meet someone trying
to build a bridge over the nation's political divide.
Dave Isay has created a program called One Small Step
to get Americans on the left and the right to stop demonizing one
another and start communicating face-to-face,
one conversation at a time.
One Small Step grew out of StoryCorps,
the oral history project Dave Isay founded 21 years ago.
As we first reported in 2022.
It has taped more than half a million Americans telling
their stories, to become the largest single collection
of human voices ever recorded, with one aim at its core.
What if we just give the entire country the chance
to be listened to and have a chance
to talk about who they are?
Do you think part of the problem we're
having in America is that people are
so angry because they don't feel like anybody's
listening to them?
Yeah, I think people feel misunderstood
and judged and heard.
In the history of humanity, nobody
has ever changed their mind by being
called an idiot or a moron or a snowflake.
But many minds have been changed by being listened to,
by conversation, being told that they're loved.
Something that we would all consider maybe so simple
is so powerful.
Yeah, being told that all of our stories
matter equally and infinitely is something everyone
needs to hear.
Dave Isay seems to always be listening, always taking notes,
even during our interview.
He told us journalism should be a public service
and now hopes that one small step
can help end what he calls the culture of contempt that
is tearing apart the country.
The situation is so bad that if the culture of contempt wins,
things are just not going to end well for the United States.
What's fueling the culture of contempt?
It's media.
It's social media.
There's a multi-multi-multi-billion dollar
hate industrial complex, where people can make money by making
us hate and fear each other.
It's a little bit of a David and Goliath fight here.
Long before he started StoryCorps and One Small Step,
Dave Isay fought to tell stories of the forgotten
by making radio documentaries in flophouses, coal mines,
and public housing projects.
I need you guys from here on in to be really on top of stuff.
He first appeared on 60 Minutes more than 25 years ago,
in a story with Lesley Stahl about two teenagers from Chicago
who made their own documentary with his help.
The pair won a Peabody Award, one of the highest
honors in broadcasting.
Thank you.
In 2003, he got the idea for StoryCorps.
Everybody, my family, everybody, thought
it was absolutely insane.
We started with a booth in Grand Central Terminal,
and it's a very simple idea.
You come to the booth with your grandmother,
with anyone who you want to honor by listening to them.
So people think of it as, if I had 40 minutes
left to live, what would I say to this person who
means so much to me?
To attract people, he reached out
to the people's library, specifically
the director of the Library of Congress's American Folklife
Center.
And I said, I'm going to try and record the whole country.
Will you accept the materials?
And she said those magical three letters, yes.
And that was it.
And here we are.
The StoryCorps archive is in good company
at what is the largest library in the world.
Other treasures here include a rare Gutenberg Bible, as well as
a draft of the Declaration of Independence handwritten
by Thomas Jefferson, and a preliminary draft of President
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
Dr. Carla Hayden serves as the librarian of Congress.
Until recently, it was a lifetime appointment,
so only 14 people have held the job since 1802.
How does having StoryCorps here fit
into your vision for the Library of Congress?
StoryCorps is an important part of adding
history and context and the individuals who make history,
not just the ones that we see on the news,
but the people who are part of the fabric of our American life,
the everyday people.
What did they feel?
What did they believe?
To try to find out, StoryCorps rolled out a mobile booth
in 2005 to travel the country.
They also launched partnerships and story collection programs
in multiple American cities.
This is Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps.
When the pandemic hit, they created a new way for people
to submit stories online.
Share your interview far and wide
and know that someday, future generations will be listening.
Every Friday, for the last 19 years,
National Public Radio sends one story
into the homes, headphones, and cars of 6 million people.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, it's Friday, which is when we hear from StoryCorps.
We were at NPR's Washington studio
to hear Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep introduce
the story of Miguel Encinias, a decorated fighter
pilot who passed away in 2016 at the age of 92.
He served as a US military pilot in World War II
and Korea and Vietnam.
Two of his children, Isabel and Juan Pablo Encinias,
came to StoryCorps to remember him.
When I was little, I remember him flying in his fighter jet
and us waiting for him on the tarmac and thinking,
oh, my god, what a hero my father is.
As he got older, he was diagnosed with dementia.
But even at the end, when he cognitively he wasn't all there,
he would hear a plane and just look up
and stare at it in the sky.
And you could tell that he just wanted to be up in that plane
with every ounce of his being.
Maybe he's listening to us somewhere up there.
[LAUGHS]
I hope so.
Sometimes in an interview, you can almost
see sparks flying out of someone's mouth.
There's just this kind of magnificence and grace
to the story.
And those are the ones where you just--
it almost demands to be shared with a larger audience.
In 2010, StoryCorps began to animate conversations
to be viewed by new audiences online,
like this one recorded in Mississippi between Albert Sykes
and his nine-year-old son, Aidan.
Are you proud of me?
Of course.
You're my man.
I just love everything about you, period.
The thing I love about you, you never give up on me.
That's one of the things I will always remember about my dad.
Have you thought about selling Kleenexes?
You could make a lot of money?
We've always wanted to get Kleenex as a sponsor,
but they've never agreed.
Only a tiny fraction of StoryCorps' hundreds
of thousands of stories ever make it onto the radio.
They're selected by StoryCorps' facilitators, who make up
the actual core of StoryCorps.
Once I press record, we're going to have
you introduce yourselves.
Facilitators are trained in both the art
and the technical aspects of story collection.
Wonderful.
Jason Reynolds serves on StoryCorps' board of directors.
He's also one of the most popular and celebrated
young adult authors in the country.
19 years ago, fresh out of college,
he was a facilitator who conducted
close to 300 StoryCorps sessions over 18 months.
I felt like I was privy to something
special, something sacred, and something
that would last forever.
And no one would know that I'm in the room, right?
But I was in the room for some of the most beautiful tales I've
ever heard.
So it sounds like what you heard in the booth is
very different than what people may hear on the radio.
Absolutely.
Sometimes you can almost hear the anxiety of it all.
And other times you can hear the gentle tenderness
of human beings,
I think StoryCorps and the facilitators,
they get to see who we really are as Americans,
and it's not what you see on 24-hour news.
Around the time of the 2016 presidential election,
Dave Isay says he got the idea for a new kind of StoryCorps
that could perhaps help unite a country becoming increasingly
divided.
He decided to call it One Small Step.
What's the difference between regular StoryCorps and One
Small Step?
So every regular StoryCorps interview
are people who know and love each other,
and every One Small Step interview are strangers.
And in the case of One Small Step,
it's people who are across the political divide.
After you read each other's bios,
I'm going to ask, why did you want to do the interview today?
So we match strangers who disagree politically to put them
face-to-face for 50 minutes.
It's not to talk about politics.
It's just to talk about your lives.
Facilitators begin by asking the participants to read
one another's biography out loud, as in this session
in Richmond, Virginia.
The project tries to match people
who may be from different political parties
but have something else in common.
Hi.
I grew up as an Army brat and an evangelical Christian surrounded
by a very powerful ideology of conservatism, patriotism,
and religion.
I am a Baptist pastor and performance
artist, a native Charlottesville,
graduate of the University of Virginia,
and Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
Participants are encouraged to focus on what they share.
We're pastors, and we're helping people to find their path
and find their voice.
Oh, Brenda, I love what you just said
about helping people find their path,
because I feel such a connection there.
The format is derived from a psychological concept developed
in the 1950s called contact theory.
Which says that when you have two people who are enemies
and you put them face-to-face under very, very
specific conditions and they have
a conversation and a kind of visceral,
emotional experience with each other, that hate can melt away,
and people can see each other in a new way.
I'm here because I thought I want
to be a part of a better world for our children
and our grandchildren.
Yeah.
I can't save the whole world, but I can do my part where I am.
And, dagnabbit, I'm going to.
So far, One Small Step has completed more than 2,500
sessions.
It has a presence in Wichita, Kansas;
Richmond, Virginia; and Columbus, Georgia.
So I'm just going to give you a quick rundown on what's
been going on with One Small Step since we last spoke.
Once a month, Dave Isay meets with what he calls
One Small Step's braintrust.
It includes social psychology professors
from Yale and Columbia, former political advisors
from both the right and the left--
I like how you can't tell who's a Democrat
and who's a Republican.
--and pollsters who found data to support
the idea that there is an exhausted majority in America.
They're tired.
They're scared.
They're sick of the division, and they
want to figure out a way out.
And we've got to give them a way out.
Dave Isay makes it a point to venture outside
of StoryCorps' home turf on NPR to increase the project's reach.
I have no idea what your politics are,
which is one of the reasons I like you
so much, because I don't think you are primarily political.
You're really interested in bringing people together.
You actively seek out media outlets
that appeal to conservatives, like Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck.
Yeah I think what makes One Small Step special
is that all of us believe in every cell of our body
that there is a flame of good in you, whether you're liberal
or whether you're conservative.
And our job is to fan that flame until it becomes a roaring fire.
I take my hat off to Dave.
I think once more he's proving that he's
willing to walk the walk.
When you heard about the One Small Step initiative,
what did you think?
It is very, very difficult for us to hate one another when
I'm looking you in the face and we're
talking about what we like to cook our children for dinner
and we're talking about how difficult it is
to get our babies into college.
It isn't an easy fix.
It isn't some kind of hocus-pocus, kumbaya,
or it's all fine.
It isn't any of that.
He knows that.
But somebody gotta do something.
Our dream with One Small Step is that we convince the country
that it's our patriotic duty to see the humanity in people
with whom we disagree.
It's going to take a lot of stories
to bring this country together.
We're banking on a bit of a miracle here.
You just don't give up.
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The StoryCorps session Jason Reynolds never forgot.
What a gift to be allowed to watch such an incredible thing
happen.
At 60minutesovertime.com.
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I'm Bill Whitaker.
We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.
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