[performing "Sir Duke"]
When I think of music, I think of it being one of the greatest forces that we have
to encourage and motivate people to the positive.
Dear Stevie...
-Dear Stevie... -Dear Stevie...
Dear Stevie,
Your music has guided me through the most difficult moments of my life.
[Stevie] Songs inspire people to be their better self.
You sang about love and equality.
Your music empowered me to speak out on behalf of all people with disabilities.
[man] Through your lyrics and music,
you shined a light on the history of racial inequality.
You filled me with hope and possibility.
I'm always very thankful that I can use my voice to inspire and motivate.
To encourage action through words and song,
to me, is-is one of the most incredible things that can happen.
-[woman] Dear Stevie... -Dear Stevie...
- [woman 2] Dear Stevie... - [man 2] Dear Stevie...
[voices continue]
[performing piano instrumental]
[Stevie] When we talk about songs that have been used
to motivate people, to inspire,
those songs are very, very important.
To write those songs, you have to have that emotion in your heart that says,
"This is real. This is what I feel."
You have to believe it.
My becoming blind after my birth, I can't remember.
I was so, so, so very little, only days old.
There are times that I sometimes think I may have seen my mother's complexion.
It could be my imagination, but whatever I did see was beautiful.
And it's always been my image of her in my mind.
I grew up in the Brewster Projects.
We were very poor.
That's a challenge for anyone.
But me being blind,
the hard lesson for me to learn was, you can't climb a tree like everyone else.
'Cause I'd try to anyway.
You can't run across the street like everybody else,
because you can't see the car coming.
So, I challenged myself to do as much as possible. I didn't give up.
I was given a pair of bongos when I was, I think, eight or nine years old.
Then I was like, challenged to learn how to play the drums.
I wanted to understand what that meant. How did it make that sound?
How did the piano do what it did? How did the guitar do what it did?
I knew that's what I wanted to do: music.
This one particular day, I was in the alley with my friends.
You know, cursin', and bein' bad and talkin' stuff.
Snappin', you know.
I said to my friends,
"Walk me across the street to where that music is coming from,
I'll give you a quarter."
I brought my bongos, and we were on the front porch playing.
There was a man who came up and said,
"Hey, you know, boy, you got such a beautiful voice."
That's how it all started.
[male interviewer] How were you introduced to Motown?
I was introduced or...
discovered by Ronnie White,
who was one of the background singers on the Miracles.
[Stevie] Ronnie worked it out for me to go to Motown
to then meet Smokey Robinson.
And I could not believe it. It was like, "What?"
♪ So take a good look at my face ♪
Motown managed Jackie Wilson and...
[singing "Lonely Teardrops"]
the Supremes, and all the different artists.
-♪ Baby, don't leave me ♪ -♪ Oh ♪
I remember Diana's squeaky voice, and I wanted to meet her.
I had a crush on her, and I was 11 years old.
So there you go.
I understood, "This is the opportunity."
A way to make life better for my mother, my family members.
I wanted to be a part of it.
When I was, like, 13, I had my first number one song, "Fingertips."
I remember getting the Billboard Award from Joanne Woodward.
It was in braille.
It was amazing. I mean, it was amazing.
[singing "Fingertips"]
The whole nation, not just African American people,
embraced me incredibly well.
Have I heard people in my life say, "You can't do this and you can't do that"?
I've heard people say that. I've heard stuff like that.
[song ends]
Hey, let's give him a great big hand.
But, you know, I never felt I was defeated because of being blind.
I never felt that way.
You have to make a choice.
Do you live only up to that point and then give up?
For me, I say no.
I can't let me being blind determine what I can't do,
because I'm too determined to get beyond that.
[woman] Dear Stevie,
I've been a fan of your music since I was a kid.
But it wasn't until I was preparing for university
that your music truly changed my life.
I had dreams of going to medical school
so that I could make a positive difference in people's lives.
But one night I went to bed,
and I woke up the next morning to complete darkness.
As I opened my eyes, I panicked.
All I could see was this deep, thick blackness.
I had gone completely blind overnight.
It was the scariest, most traumatic experience of my life.
I was diagnosed with a condition called diabetic retinopathy.
[Stevie] "And that's when my world shattered."
I spent the next year in a deep depression.
Before my diagnosis,
I had been a straight A student who couldn't wait to go to college.
But once I became blind, I was convinced my life was over.
Suicide became a very real thought.
That's when a friend saw the pain I was going through.
He knew I was losing hope.
He handed me your album and told me, "This is not the end of your story.
This is just the beginning."
["Jesus Children of America" playing]
I went home and listened to your music over and over again, obsessively.
After everything I'd gone through, your music took on a whole new meaning.
[Stevie] "It was as if I was being introduced to a new friend."
[song continues]
You filled me with hope and possibility,
which I hadn't felt since I'd lost my sight.
That helped me reconnect with the world around me.
Once I became comfortable with my vision impairment,
I was no longer beaten down.
I began thinking about all the things I could do.
Over time, some of my vision returned.
While I'm still legally blind,
I went to school and graduated from college.
Then I earned my master's degree in social work.
I now work as a college counselor.
Each day, I help students
who have gone through difficult circumstances like I have
and support them as they find their way forward,
just as you did for me.
I share my story with my students all the time.
I tell them how when I felt completely lost,
you helped me find my inner strength...
[Stevie] "So that I could be me again."
What a wonderful thing.
We're all trying to take the world to a better, higher place.
When I first came to Motown, we were playing various places,
performing around the country.
Being so young, there were lots of things I didn't understand.
One particular night,
we're at this civic center kind of place in Macon, Georgia.
I remember being onstage.
And I hear this, like--
[imitates whooshing]
Right? This fan, right?
The fan, actually, I come to find out, was a Confederate flag.
Our black manager told the emcee,
"We can't have the flag, you know, flying on the stage when we're onstage.
This is Motown, the sound of young America.
The Supremes, Little Stevie."
The guy says, like, "You see the way that flag's blowin' in the breeze?
If you-all don't get your ass on the stage,
you're gonna be blowin' in the breeze like that."
It was just painful for me.
I was sort of nervous,
because I didn't know what this whole thing was about.
[crowd chanting]
I didn't understand how some people can be so hung up with hate.
[chanting continues]
-[siren blaring] -[flames crackling]
The uprising in Detroit happened, '67.
It all began in the early hours of Sunday.
Police raided an after-hours drinking establishment.
A group of curious bystanders congregated.
Their curiosity turned to hostility.
- Empty bottles began flying. - [glass shatters]
[siren blaring in distance]
By daylight, the rioting started.
[male reporter] Forty-three Americans died in these streets.
Four hundred seventy-seven buildings were damaged or destroyed.
It exploded because the black people were angry.
It all started based on prejudices
and unnecessary brutality by the policemen.
When it's just too much, things have to pop,
and that's what happened.
I was performing in Baltimore.
I came home the next day, and it was crazy.
You had all these armored trucks going through the streets,
and no one was allowed to be on the street after a certain hour.
I had a lot of emotions bottled up inside.
I felt so many of these prejudices had been going on.
It was, "Enough is enough. It's gotta stop."
After that, I started working on songs that had some political significance.
I just saw it as being the right thing to do.
[singing "Living for the City"]
"Living For the City,"
it's about this boy caught up in an unjust system.
[singing continues]
America has never confronted the issue of race.
We can't allow this thing called hate to continue to be out of control.
If you have the ability to do something about it,
then do something about it.
[man] Dear Stevie,
As a child I struggled with the humiliation and indignation
of being excluded, disfavored, just because of my race.
My elementary school was integrated when I was in second grade.
But I and the other black children were placed in remedial classes,
while the white kids were automatically put in the accelerated classes.
I remember feeling humiliated.
I often asked, "Why aren't people treated equally?"
But I got no answers from school or in church.
I found them in your music.
To me, it seemed like you were asking the same question.
["Jesus Children of America" playing]
I learned more about black history and the central truths about human rights
from your music than any place I can remember in school.
[singing "Higher Ground"]
Your words spoke truths about injustices
that we all must fight to overcome in this country.
I wanted to confront those injustices head-on.
So I worked hard, and I went to law school.
[Stevie] "I wanted to get to higher ground."
[singing continues]
[song ends]
I wanted to represent the oppressed, the voiceless,
the most vulnerable people in our society.
So I opened a nonprofit law office dedicated to representing people
wrongly convicted by our criminal justice system.
[male reporter] Walter McMillian walked out of Holman Prison
after a harrowing six years on death row.
He had been convicted of shooting an 18-year-old woman to death,
despite a dozen witnesses placing McMillian elsewhere at the time.
There's no physical evidence.
There's no corroborating circumstances, there's nothing.
[reporter] Some people believe the death penalty was racially motivated.
Sometimes you have to stand up, even when others sit down.
That conviction helped me create the Equal Justice Initiative
which has now won relief for over 140 people wrongly convicted
or unfairly sentenced on death row.
I stand with the condemned, the accused, the convicted.
[Stevie] "The work is difficult, but your music has reminded me
that justice is a constant struggle."
And love has the power to overcome bigotry and hate.
[woman] Oh! I love you so much.
[man] This is a very happy day.
It's a tragic day too, because Mr. Hinton spent 30 years locked in a 5-by-8 cell,
where the State of Alabama tried to kill him every day.
[Stevie] "You've inspired me to believe we can do great things."
Justice work requires a soundtrack.
No one has provided the voice, the expression, the beauty
to motivate us to protect human rights more than you.
["Jesus Children of America" playing]
That inspires me to want to write more songs,
to play more instruments, to play them better, you know.
To continue.
It's obvious that for a while you'd been loosening your ties with Motown.
Did they control what songs were put on albums,
what songs were made into singles?
They did. I think the problem with Motown basically was that
they considered me almost like a child.
And I want the freedom, the freedom to grow.
When I was 21, I wanted to become more independent
to have the control that I needed to do the music that I felt was in me.
So I officially left Motown, and I went to New York.
I wanted to meet Bob Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil,
because Bob and Malcolm had synthesizers.
And I was curious about how I could use them
for creating the kind of music that I wanted to do.
The sound felt very unique to me.
It was like, "Aw, man, this is magical."
[plays notes on synthesizer]
- That's a new instrument for you then. -Yes.
It has what are known as oscillators.
And with these four knobs here,
you can change the whole shape of a sound.
[playing notes on synthesizer]
[frequency shifting]
[applause]
I was able to work with the oscillator
to create the kind of bass sound that I wanted to get.
To get the sort of horn sound that I wanted to get.
And you can do so many beautiful things with it.
Make sounds that are bigger than life.
I was so inspired to write.
I went to Electric Lady Studio, which was Jimi Hendrix's studio,
and recorded music there.
["Living for the City" playing]
I could record track after track, put the drums down, put the keyboard down.
I couldn't play the acoustic bass,
but I could create a sound similar to the acoustic bass.
You know, all of a sudden, everything was accessible.
I did so much recording. I must have done about 40 songs.
[performing "Superstition"]
And out of that time came Music of My Mind...
Talking Book...
Innervisions,
Fulfillingness' First Finale.
We then did Songs in the Key of Life.
[singing "Superstition"]
That short period of time really did further my music career.
And the winner is "You Are the Sunshine of My Life,"
- Stevie Wonder. - Stevie Wonder for Innervisions.
[together] Stevie Wonder!
This man is, without a doubt,
the most influential rock star of the decade.
He sold a million records as "Little" Stevie Wonder.
He couldn't be bigger now, or better.
[Stevie] I was able to show people that,
hey, maybe you're blind or you may have a disability,
and you using your body in ways that one could have never imagined,
sometimes even better than those who have all of their senses,
it goes to show that maybe your purpose is in that very thing.
[man 2] Dear Stevie,
As a kid growing up, I loved making music with my friends.
When I got older, I got caught up in the streets.
One day, my cousin brought home a gun.
The gun went off by accident, and the bullet struck my neck.
I was only 17.
In the hospital, doctors told me I was paralyzed
and would never walk again.
I was deeply depressed and felt trapped in my own body.
[Stevie] "Adjusting to my new life seemed impossible."
[man 2] I thought no one would listen to a rapper in a wheelchair.
Pretty soon, I found out it was even harder than that.
The high-rise walk-ups, curbs and buildings without elevators boxed me in.
It was hard to do certain everyday things that people take for granted,
like riding the subway.
So much of the city was shut off to me.
[Stevie] "I struggled a lot after my injuries.
I looked to you for inspiration."
Stevie, you know what it's like to face adversity and conquer it.
[performing "Sir Duke"]
[singing]
[man 2] After my accident, when I saw you perform,
that helped me realize just how much I could still do
and how much I had to say.
["Sir Duke" continues]
My friend Rick and I formed a rap group called 4 Wheel City,
and on the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act,
we wrote a song called "The Movement" about how we need universal access
so that we have the same opportunities as everyone else.
- ♪ Bullies in accessible stores ♪ -♪ 4 wheel city ♪
- ♪ Yeah, you don't want us here ♪ -♪ 4 wheel city ♪
The first time we performed the song,
it was in front of an audience at the National Spinal Cord Association.
♪ I've got something on my chest That's been bothering me ♪
♪ What the problem will be When I'm out in the street ♪
♪ It's like I can't go over here What's wrong with me? ♪
It was empowering.
We played more local shows and spread the word about universal access
and the dangers of gun violence.
♪ But the truth is I can't walk up the stairs ♪
♪ So I need a ramp and an elevator too ♪
Like you, I write about real issues that affect our community,
and I speak about things I want to change.
[Stevie] "You showed me that no matter my circumstances,
I could make a difference through my music."
[applause]
South Africa's white minority government today declared
a sweeping state of emergency that gives police unlimited powers.
[male reporter] As the children rioted, they were ambushed.
The struggle for people who were under this cruel regime
of South Africa's apartheid was unacceptable.
[female reporter] Nelson Mandela will spend his 70th birthday behind bars,
silenced by the South African authorities.
His name is a potent symbol of resistance and hope.
I was committed to doing whatever I could do to be a part of that voice.
[singing "It's Wrong (Apartheid)"]
I was seeing that history too much was repeating itself to the negative.
So I wrote about it.
[singing continues]
It was a movement.
[chanting] Free South Africa!
[Stevie] There were people everywhere going around saying,
"Hey. This-This cannot be. This has to change."
[male reporter] The demonstrations in the capital began last November,
outside the South African Embassy.
I can't just sing about it. We're gonna be about it.
We're gonna demand that these things stop.
And so I had no problem with being arrested
outside the South African Embassy in Washington.
Americans have to speak against oppression.
Hate will not prevail.
That same year, my song "I Just Called to Say I Love You"
was up for an Oscar.
-[applause] -[man] And the winner is...
-Stevie Wonder! -[cheers, applause]
I would like to accept this award in the name of Nelson Mandela.
And thank my family and my crew from my heart.
I love you.
When I said, "I accept this Oscar in honor of Nelson Mandela,"
my music was banned in South Africa.
Good. You know, ban me.
Because I wanted the people of South Africa to know
that I was fighting with them,
which hopefully will inspire other people to speak against oppression.
Then reach out to others,
bring more and more people in for the goodness of all.
[woman 2] Dear Stevie,
My name is Nomsa. My whole life, I longed to be free.
I was born and raised in Soweto, during the height of apartheid.
Growing up under this oppressive government...
[Stevie] "We lived in constant fear."
Many people in my township disappeared under mysterious circumstances,
never to return home.
It was illegal for more than ten black South Africans
to gather in one place at any time.
In defiance of the law,
my father opened up an underground speakeasy at our house,
where black South Africans would meet to share ideas and inspire each other.
It was dangerous, but the brief sense of freedom it provided was worth the risk.
It was during these meetings when my father would play your music.
["It's Wrong (Apartheid)" playing]
Our community rallied behind your songs.
[Stevie] "You inspired all of us to stand up for what is right."
[song continues]
One day, the door burst open and the police raided our home.
-[shouting, screaming] -[glass shatters]
That night, they took my father away.
I feared I would never see him again, that he would disappear like the others.
A week went by without knowing his fate.
Finally, he made it back home.
But it took him a long time to recover.
Those years were difficult.
I dreamed about coming to America in search of a better life.
One day, I heard rumors I could make it to America via Switzerland.
So I quickly boarded a plane and found my way out of South Africa.
But when I arrived in Switzerland,
the officials told me I couldn't travel to America,
and I was forced to go back to South Africa.
I was devastated. I thought I could never escape apartheid.
The flight back was the loneliest I'd ever felt in my life.
I put my headphones on to escape the pain.
As I sat there, hopeless, a beautiful, familiar voice filled my headphones.
["Jesus Children of America" playing]
[Stevie] "It was like you were right there with me, telling me it would be okay."
[Nomsa] I promised myself I wouldn't give up until I realized my dream.
After years of denials trying to get my visa,
I suspected my father's arrest cast a shadow over my application.
So I changed my last name to my mother's.
And finally, after nine long years, I was granted my visa.
I boarded a plane to America.
It was the moment I'd been waiting for my whole life.
I was free.
You've been a presence throughout my whole life.
You shined a light on apartheid and helped me realize
that love and equality can prevail against oppression.
I am so thankful that I've been able to use whatever gift I've been given
to inspire people to be their better self.
Every single one of us has to use whatever talents we have,
whatever heart we have,
to make a better place for everyone.
And I don't think it's impossible.
Thank you, Stevie, for showing me that my music can change the world.
[speaking Zulu]
Thank you for standing up for my freedom.
You've inspired me to fight for love and equality,
and to right the wrongs of our society.
We are singing for love and for oneness for all people.
Sincerely, Namel.
Sincerely, Nomsa.
Thank you, Stevie. Bryan.
Thank you, Stevie. Tracy.