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Anthony Ray Hinton gives a lecture honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Utah Valley University on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023.

Courtesy Utah Valley University

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David Kwabena Wilson gives a lecture honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Utah Valley University on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023.

Courtesy Utah Valley University

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Anthony Ray Hinton signs books for students after a lecture honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Utah Valley University on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023.

Courtesy Utah Valley University

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Utah Valley University invited guest speakers David Kwabena Wilson and Anthony Ray Hinton to share their experiences and talk about Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, civil rights, voting and education in the UVU Grand Ballroom on Thursday to cap UVU’s MLK Commemoration Week.

Wilson, the president of Morgan State University in Baltimore, was the first to address the audience. He began his speech by touching on “the unfinished agenda of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” stating, “We are obliged to actively defend the right of all citizens to vote, and all citizens to participate in our cherished and hard-won democracy.”

He continued by saying, “The sacred right to vote is clearly under attack, as various states … enact laws that actually create barriers to voter registration. … The eminent scholar W.E.B. DuBois, he warned African Americans in particular that, ‘The power of the ballot’ he said, ‘we need in sheer defense, else we shall not be saved from a second slavery.'”

Wilson then shared how his own life has been affected by racial injustice. The youngest of 10 children, he said he is the first person in his family to go to college. He attended Tuskegee University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in education. But it was a long road to get there, he said.

Growing up, his parents were sharecroppers on a plantation in Alabama. They needed their children’s help with work and could only afford to send them to school a few days a week. His siblings all dropped out of school by first grade. But not Wilson.

“‘I want you to tell (your father) that if he could figure out a way to send you to school five days a week, I think you can go to college,'” he said, recalling words his sixth grade teacher told him at school one day. “Whoa. That was the first time I’d ever heard the word college.”

When he told his father this, his only reply was, “College is for white people.” Five years went by, Wilson said, without any further discussion of college. He later applied to Tuskegee University, telling the UVU crowd, “To this day, I cannot explain why they accepted me.” Before leaving for college, his father handed him his last five years’ worth of savings: “A crisp, $5 bill.”

Later in life, Wilson said he felt his father telling him, “‘It’s time for you to pay me back on my investment in you.’ … So I made the first of many gifts to Morgan (State University). I made a gift of $100,000 initially to establish the $5 Scholarship Program in honor of my late father. And that program now is about $1.6 million and we use the investments there to provide opportunities for students who are not too dissimilar from the president to taste the magic of education.”

Hinton, an activist who spent 30 years on death row for a murder conviction that was later overturned, followed by sharing the story of his wrongful incarceration in the Holman Correctional Facility of southern Alabama. Hinton was framed for two murders, based solely on the fact that the murder weapon was a gun taken from his mother’s room that she “kept around the house for snakes.”

The detective who arrested Hinton said to him, “I don’t care whether you did or didn’t do it, but I’m gonna make sure that you’re found guilty of it.”

Hinton was at work at the time of the crimes, which also included kidnapping and robbery. His white supervisor came to testify of this, but Hinton was still indicted for the two murders.

He was provided with a lawyer who Hinton said was racist and didn’t believe he was innocent. “That lawyer did exactly enough to get me found guilty and sentenced to death. I never will forget the day … the (white) judge proudly stood up and said, ‘Anthony Ray Hinton, you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers. And it is to honor this court that I sentence you to death.’ And that judge had the audacity to say, ‘May God have mercy on your soul.'”

“The prosecution perhaps said a little louder than he intended to say it, but he could be heard over the courtroom saying these words: ‘We didn’t get the right (N-word) today. But at least we got a (N-word) off the street,'” Hinton said, not censoring the slurs.

Hinton spent the next 30 years in a 5-by-7-foot cell. “I didn’t speak to another human being for three years,” he said, explaining that he had lost faith in the system that was supposed to protect the innocent.

Hinton said he knew that if he was to survive his long sentence, he had to find a way to mentally escape his surroundings. In his imagination, he had tea with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace and married Halle Berry, who he later divorced after 16 years together to marry another actress.

“One day, (the warden) did something that he had never done for death row,” Hinton said. “He decided that he would show us a movie, and the movie was called ‘Speed.’ And (that was) the first time I laid eyes on Sandra Bullock.”

After the movie, a man named Bryan Stevenson sent a lawyer to Hinton, who disagreed with the man’s suggestion to plead guilty and ask for life without parole. Hinton wrote to Stevenson himself, requesting him to be his lawyer.

“The moment I shook this man’s hand, I knew God had sent me his No. 1 lawyer,” Hinton said. He asked Stevenson to hire a white, Southern, male ballistics expert who would simply tell the truth, knowing anyone else’s word would not be taken seriously in an Alabama court.

Through this expert, it was proved that the bullets used in the murder did not match the gun. Still, the attorney general decided to not have the bullets reexamined by the court. “I sat on Alabama death row an extra 16 years because the state of Alabama was not willing to tell the truth,” Hinton said.

During this time, Hinton’s mother passed away. He began to lose hope, but was reminded that his mother didn’t raise him to be a quitter.

Hinton and Stevenson continued to appeal his case until it reached the Supreme Court. In a rare, unanimous decision, all nine judges agreed that Hinton should be given another trial.

Hinton won his trial and was released April 3, 2013. Hinton said he was let go, but “will never be free again until the day I die. You see, no one in here knows of the hell that I went through, because the state of Alabama knew that I didn’t have the money to hire a decent defense. We have a system that treats you better if you’re rich and guilty (instead of) if you’re poor and innocent.”

Hinton said he believes the high expense of executing a death row prisoner should be spent on giving teachers and social workers raises, as well as hiring more police officers.

“But I came here today because I believe in the young people in this country. I believe that young people hold the key to solving racism. I believe that the young people in this country hold the key to making injustice (turn to) justice for every man, every woman and every child,” he said.

Hinton concluded his speech by saying, “I see the hatred in this country, whether you believe it or not. … I truly believe that we have so much in common. But we are afraid to have a conversation. I believe that Americans need an open and honest conversation about race.”

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