00:00You talked a little bit about Vivian Malone.
00:07Who else who are women, particularly African-American women,
00:13have had an impact on who you are particularly as a lawyer
00:17and as a thinker around questions of the law and of politics?
00:22Well, I can tell one, Miriam Holder, my mother.
00:26A high school graduate, denied the opportunity to go to college,
00:30but was extremely well-read and always taught me to, you know,
00:36to fight for justice, to assume the best about people,
00:40but be prepared to take on people who would do things in a negative way.
00:46So she is my rock. Everything that I am is based on her.
00:50I think about Merle Evers, you know, a person who I've gotten to know
00:54and have a great deal of respect for.
00:58She's obviously the widow of a great man,
01:00but has carved out a role for herself.
01:04Coretta Scott King, you know, a person who, again,
01:07I did not have the chance to know,
01:09but I marvel at the things that she did.
01:13Constance Baker Motley, you know, a great judge,
01:17a great lawyer who was involved in the NAACP who then became a great judge.
01:23I think about my wife and I think about Vivian and, you know, that family
01:28and all that they did, all the sacrifices that they made.
01:33You know, people tend to focus on that one day when Vivian integrated the University of Alabama
01:38and don't focus on the two years where she lived under the threats that she had to deal with.
01:43She had protection the whole time.
01:46And I think about, you know, her little sister who's my wife
01:49and how her brothers had to sit on the, close to the roof of their house with shotguns
01:55as, you know, threats were called in.
01:57The kind of courage that all of these women have shown,
02:01some of whom weren't lawyers, but all of whom had a sense about what justice ought to look like
02:08and were prepared to fight for.
02:10All of them had an impact on me.
02:13You've done a lot of work around human trafficking,
02:16around violence against women,
02:18around even addressing rape and sexual assault on college campuses.
02:22Sometimes it feels like it is a struggle to get male lawmakers
02:27to recognize that these issues are also their issues.
02:32How do we do that work to make women's issues everyone's issue?
02:36They're not also men's issues.
02:38When it comes to violence against women, they are men's issues.
02:42They're men's issues.
02:43You know, there's no need to bifurcate this.
02:46Women do not invite the violence that they have to deal with.
02:51It is men who do these things in inappropriate ways.
02:55And somehow or another we have to raise the consciousness of the men in our society.
03:01We have to hold them accountable when they do these awful things.
03:05Again, it's something I'm hopeful that we can get a handle on,
03:09but boy, these are really ingrained things.
03:11I mean, we're dealing here with issues that go far beyond, you know,
03:16the establishment of the United States as a republic.
03:19In some ways I think these are among the most intractable things that we have to do.
03:24But we have to make women comfortable, you know, in reporting these things.
03:30We have to erase the stigma that exists around women who are victimized in a sexual way.
03:38If I walk down the street and somebody hits me, you know, in the face,
03:42I don't have any problem reporting that to the police.
03:46Why should a woman who is a victim of sexual assault feel that there is somehow some stigma involved in it,
03:53or make her less reluctant to report that?
03:56It's a complicated issue that is going to require a great deal of work and focus.
04:03You were at the memorial service for Dr. Maya Angelou.
04:08She was my college advisor.
04:11I know that your eldest daughter is named Maya. Is she named for Dr. Angelou?
04:14She certainly is. She certainly is.
04:16Why? What is the lesson of Dr. Angelou that we need to know?
04:19I mean, where to begin?
04:22A woman who was a scholar, a woman who had the command of the language and used that command of the language to move us,
04:30a social observer, a social activist.
04:34You know, all that I see that is great in women, and I see a great deal that is great in women,
04:41was embodied from my perspective in her.
04:44She overcame so much.
04:47She was a great teacher.
04:49You know, she's a...
04:53Once in a lifetime does not adequately describe who Maya Angelou was,
04:59and I'm proud that my daughter is named after her.
05:03One of my favorite pictures is when I got the two Mayas together.
05:07My daughter was about six or so.
05:09I had a really bad cold.
05:11But I have that picture, and it is something that I treasure.
05:15My last question for you, so I'm going to go back to the source.
05:18You talked about your mother, who you lost during the time that you've been serving as Attorney General.
05:23President Obama lost his grandmother just on the eve of being elected to the U.S. Presidency.
05:30What does a man in power lose when he loses his mother, when she's been a person who has been so important?
05:38Yeah.
05:39I remember that day as if it were yesterday.
05:42You know, we were on the vineyard, and it's a disorienting thing.
05:47You lose your sense of direction for a while.
05:52I was grateful that she got to see the products, the fruits of her labor.
05:57She got to see me sworn in as Attorney General.
06:00It's a picture that I treasure.
06:02But, you know, August the 13th of 2010 is a day that will stay with me forever.
06:09And it's a difficult thing, even now, to talk about.
06:16She was a woman I admired, who I went to for advice, along with my dad.
06:23But who was always 100% behind me, you know.
06:29I was Ricky Holder to her as long as I lived.
06:32And everything, she would brook no criticism of her boy.
06:38And that's a good thing, to be able to pick up the phone, you know, when things are rough,
06:43and to get that kind of, you know, that kind of love shared with you.
06:50It knocked me off there for a while.
06:55I miss her, you know.
06:57I miss her every day.
06:58And I hope that as I leave my time as Attorney General, I hope that wherever she is, she's proud of me.
07:06That matters to me.
07:08I love her.
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