When New Jersey Senator Cory Booker was mayor of Newark, N.J., this country was home to more African American men under criminal supervision than were enslaved in the 1850s. Mass incarceration, he said in his speech, “destroyed economic potential in communities.” Now, Booker has been working to close the racial wealth gap through different initiatives in Congress. He told the crowd that he sees “folks in this room who understand what guts and grit and hard work and resilience is all about.”