Michelle Alexander, a litigator-turned-legal scholar, is dedicated to rooting out racial bias in the criminal-justice system. Mass incarceration and the war on drugs, the former Soros Justice fellow says, is "the new Jim Crow." "There are more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850," she writes. She's a bold voice and a public intellectual breaking down the realities facing younger generations.

Watch her on video.