Oprah's Book Club: "The Sun Does Shine" by Anthony Ray Hinton
Only on "CBS This Morning," Oprah Winfrey is revealing her latest, highly-anticipated book club selection: "The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row" by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin.
We spoke to Hinton in April ahead of the opening of the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, which features his story. He spent nearly 30 years on death row for crimes he did not commit until he was released in 2015.
"I started to read it and I couldn't put it down," Winfrey said Tuesday on "CBS This Morning," sitting aside Hinton. "It's a true story of this man's anguish and the fact that he was mistreated and misjudged, has never received an apology for it from the state of Alabama, and was on death row for 30 years for a crime he did not commit."
Before he was exonerated, Hinton started a book club himself with fellow death row inmates. He said he had to ask the warden, "Can I have a book club?"
"I've often thought books give you -- put you in a world that you never thought you could go. And I often would say, I don't need to go to California. Give me a book that talks about California. And I can put it in my head and imagine what it looked like," Hinton said. "And I had read a few books on the street -- not bragging -- and I felt that something was missing. All of us were there to -- been condemned and then sentenced by the world that we would be better off dead. And so I decided that until that day comes, let's live a life of fullness and let's start it with a book club."
Asked about his mother and his childhood friend, Lester Bailey, who visited him weekly in prison, Hinton paused, visibly emotional.
"My mom was my mother and father. My father lost his mind when I was about 4 years old. And my mom did everything she could to make sure that we was brought up right," Hinton said. "I often say that if I had one wish in this world, I would wish that every child could have a mother the way my mother were. And I never went without clothes, I never went without food… I never went without anything that a child needs. But above all of that she gave me unconditional love."
As for Bailey, "When everyone else turned their back on me, he there was for me," Hinton said.
Watch the video below to find out what Mr. Hinton did on his first night of freedom:
