How could I have so badly miscalculated the size of the room we needed? Given what I knew, I should have booked a gym at one of the local schools.

I was 29. I had just been elected to the Central Ward council seat in an upset. I had beaten an incumbent who was more than 40 years my senior and had held the seat for 16 years. I was a year out of law school, where I had spent a lot of time sitting in classes—but not like this one. Those classes were in ivy-covered buildings, modern and comfortable, with very few black men. Those classes did not fully explore how the broken legal system damages communities such as Newark. I felt that every law-school student should see rooms like that one in the Willie T. Wright Apartments—that America should see.

I was holding the free clinic to help men learn how to expunge their records. Expungement, in the criminal-justice sense, means to clear one’s record. Some states, like New Jersey, have narrow laws that allow certain people who made a mistake to petition after a number of years to have that mistake removed so that it won’t appear in criminal-history searches. I hoped to help give the men in that basement a clean slate, to help them break out of what Michelle Alexander calls the “American caste system,” in which they were judged by their criminal past. Rather, I wanted them to be judged only by their promise and their determination to work hard and play by the rules.

I opened the clinic with introductory remarks. We had no microphone, but I spoke loud enough for people out in the hallway to hear. I thanked our hosts and my dear friends, the Cole family, who were resident leaders at this apartment complex; I introduced my staff and then the lawyers. I spoke in a serious tone. I acknowledged that the men were there because they wanted to get jobs, to provide for their families and to move on with their lives. I acknowledged how hard it was for anybody with a criminal conviction to get a job, and explained that expungement was one way to help change that.

Too many people give up, I said, and in order to make money, some go back to doing things that get them arrested again. I promised to all, those who might qualify for expungement and those who might not, that we would try to help beyond this clinic. This was only a first step. We were calling employers and looking for ones who were willing to hire the formerly incarcerated. I thanked them for not giving up.

* * *

Again, I realized that I should have known; I should have better estimated the demand for this project. I should have known because every day on the campaign trail, I heard two things from hundreds of men I talked to: I can’t get a job and I have a record. Many were candid about what they had done. Some had committed violent crimes; most had been convicted on nonviolent drug offenses.