# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
From the 60 Minutes archives: The true story behind “Just Mercy”

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Just Mercy' and the real-life story of the attorney who exonerated death row inmates l Nightline

# data[].attributes.body
About the Book

# data[].attributes.body
USO Indo-Pacific and USO Europe | Middle East | Africa will host our monthly Overseas Virtual Book Club! discussing "Just Mercy: A Story about Justice and Redemption" by Bryan Stevenson on January 8th at 2000 JST on Zoom

Stay up to date with the Overseas Virtual Book Club by joining our Facebook Group: USO Overseas Virtual Book Club

Register here:

https://register.uso.org/4111BMB7/4a3I8XJUXb

#usoovbc #usoreading #bookclub

# data[].attributes.body
Do you enjoy USO Overseas Virtual Book Club? Let us know what you think: Post Event Survey

We appreciate your feedback as we strive to continue to support our service members, their families, and the community!

# data[].attributes.body
Since we're spread out across the world, please share your location (without sharing your exact address) on the padlet map! ** Feel free to share a quick bio in the thread, and/or directly on the padlet map (link below). -- What's your name? How do you identify (pronouns)? Where do you live?

USO OVBC Intros

# data[].attributes.body
What are you currently reading?

# data[].attributes.body
Any book recs to share with us?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned.

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults.

Mr. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the United States Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-imprisonment-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced.

Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge inequality in America. He led the creation of two highly acclaimed cultural sites which opened in 2018: the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. These new national landmark institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias.

Mr. Stevenson's work has won him numerous awards including the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Prize; the ABA Medal, the American Bar Association's highest honor; the National Medal of Liberty from the American Civil Liberties Union after he was nominated by United States Supreme Court Justice John Stevens; the Public Interest Lawyer of the Year by the National Association of Public Interest Lawyers; and the Olaf Palme Prize in Stockholm, Sweden for international human rights. In 2002, he received the Alabama State Bar Commissioners Award. In 2003, the SALT Human Rights Award was presented to Mr. Stevenson by the Society of American Law Teachers. In 2004, he received the Award for Courageous Advocacy from the American College of Trial Lawyers and also the Lawyer for the People Award from the National Lawyers Guild. In 2006 New York University presented Mr. Stevenson with its Distinguished Teaching Award. Mr. Stevenson won the Gruber Foundation International Justice Prize and was awarded the NAACP William Robert Ming Advocacy Award, the National Legal Aid & Defender Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award and the Roosevelt Institute Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom from Fear Award. In 2012, Mr. Stevenson received the American Psychiatric Association Human Rights Award, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Fred L. Shuttlesworth Award, and the Smithsonian Magazine American Ingenuity Award in Social Progress. Mr. Stevenson was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Science in 2014 and won the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize. In 2015, he was named to the Time 100 recognizing the world's most influential people. In 2016, he received the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Award. He was named in Fortune's 2016 and 2017 World's Greatest Leaders list. He received the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize, from the King Center in Atlanta in 2018. In 2020, he received the Right Livelihood Award from The Right Livelihood Foundation in Sweden. In 2023, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden.

Mr. Stevenson has received over 50 honorary doctoral degrees, including degrees from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Oxford University. He is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller, Just Mercy, which was named by Time Magazine as one of the 10 Best Books of Nonfiction for 2014 and has been awarded several honors, including the American Library Association's Carnegie Medal for best nonfiction book of 2015 and a 2015 NAACP Image Award. Just Mercy was adapted as a major motion picture and the film won the American Bar Association's 2020 Silver Gavel Award as well as four NAACP Image Awards. Mr. Stevenson is also the subject of the Emmy Award-winning HBO documentary True Justice. He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government.

Just Mercy

A powerful true story about the Equal Justice Initiative, the people we represent, and the importance of confronting injustice, Just Mercy is a bestselling book by Bryan Stevenson that has been adapted into a feature film.

True Justice

This HBO documentary follows Bryan Stevenson and EJI's struggle to create greater fairness in the criminal justice system. It reveals how racial injustice emerged, evolved, and continues to threaten America and challenges viewers to confront it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bryan Stevenson | Equal Justice Initiative

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx Recall Filming Just Mercy's Emotional Courtroom Scene

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Skip to main content

It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
LibGuides: Anti-Racism Guide: Resources for Education and Action: Doing the Work : How to Be an Ally

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Skip to main content It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

# data[].attributes.body
As a nonprofit law office founded by Bryan Stevenson in 1989, the Equal Justice Initiative represents clients sentenced to death and condemned to die in prison, challenges inhumane conditions of confinement, and works to expose racial bias in the criminal legal system.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A History of Racial Injustice Daily Calendar

Learn more about our nation's history of racial injustice by reading our online calendar, which features a different historical event each day.

Visit calendar website

Visit EJI's Legacy Sites in Montgomery

Support

EJI is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the U.S., challenging racial and economic injustice, and protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society. We've earned a perfect score from Charity Navigator.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EJI works to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and racial inequality.

# data[].attributes.body
Facebook

# data[].attributes.body
Twitter

# data[].attributes.body
Instagram

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
eji "equal justice initiative" "bryan stevenson" "national memorial for peace and justice" "legacy museum" "civil rights" lynching montgomery alabama equal j...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EJI challenges poverty and racial injustice, advocates for fair and equal treatment in the criminal justice system, and creates hope for marginalized communities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
The Power of History is in Telling the truth. 

# data[].attributes.body
Seeing firsthand how excessive punishment, racial discrimination, and inequality are deeply rooted in America’s history of racial injustice inspired us to create the Legacy Sites. By offering these unique spaces for people to gather, learn, and reflect on our history and its legacy, we hope to foster a new era of truth and justice in America.

- - -

Experience American history at the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A museum, memorial, and monument in Montgomery, Alabama.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
The Legacy Museum offers a powerful, immersive journey through America’s history of racial injustice.

# data[].attributes.body
On the site of a cotton warehouse where enslaved Black people were forced to labor in bondage, the Legacy Museum tells the story of slavery in America and its legacy through interactive media, first-person narratives, world-class art, and data-rich exhibits.

Travel through a comprehensive history of the destructive violence that shaped our nation, from the slave trade, to the era of Jim Crow and racial terror lynchings, to our current mass incarceration crisis—and find inspiration in our soaring Reflection Space and world-class art gallery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Legacy Museum

The Legacy Museum offers a powerful, immersive journey through America's history of racial injustice.

On the site of a cotton warehouse where enslaved Black people were forced to labor in bondage, the Legacy Museum tells the story of slavery in America and its legacy through interactive media, first-person narratives, world-class art, and data-rich exhibits.

Travel through a comprehensive history of the destructive violence that shaped our nation, from the slave trade, to the era of Jim Crow and racial terror lynchings, to our current mass incarceration crisis-and find inspiration in our soaring Reflection Space and world-class art gallery.

Continue your journey of learning and reflection outside the museum

Steps outside the Legacy Museum is our memorial honoring victims of racial terror lynchings between 1865 and 1876.

Located next to the museum, Legacy Plaza is a 2.5 acre park where visitors can gather to reflect and discuss their experiences at the sites.

A digital billboard and sculpture honors local civil rights legends Claudette Colvin, John Lewis, Rosa Parks, E.D. Nixon, Joanne Robinson, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Jonathan Daniels.

Grab a quick and delicious lunch at the Legacy Café food truck and eat at shaded picnic tables.

Located in the museum building, Pannie-George's Kitchen features soul food from local award-winning chefs.

From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration

From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration

A tragic, false narrative of racial difference was created in America that has resulted in centuries of racial bigotry and injustice.

This belief in racial hierarchy was used to legitimate, perpetuate, and defend slavery-and it survived slavery's abolition, fueling racial terror lynchings, demanding legally codified segregation, and spawning our contemporary mass incarceration crisis.

The Legacy Museum traces the evolution of this dehumanizing myth from our nation's founding to today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Explore the history and legacy of slavery in America. The Legacy Museum features first-person historical accounts, interactive content, and world-class art.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
The National Memorial is a sacred space for truth telling and reflection about racial terrorism and its legacy.

# data[].attributes.headline
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

# data[].attributes.subject
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

# data[].attributes.body
On a hilltop overlooking Montgomery is the nation’s first comprehensive memorial dedicated to the legacy of Black Americans who were enslaved, terrorized by lynching, humiliated by racial segregation, and presumed guilty and dangerous.

More than 4,400 Black people killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950 are remembered here. Their names are engraved on more than 800 corten steel monuments—one for each county where a racial terror lynching took place—that form the main structure of the memorial at the heart of this six-acre site.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

The National Memorial is a sacred space for truth telling and reflection about racial terrorism and its legacy.

On a hilltop overlooking Montgomery is the nation's first comprehensive memorial dedicated to the legacy of Black Americans who were enslaved, terrorized by lynching, humiliated by racial segregation, and presumed guilty and dangerous.

More than 4,400 Black people killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950 are remembered here. Their names are engraved on more than 800 corten steel monuments-one for each county where a racial terror lynching took place-that form the main structure of the memorial at the heart of this six-acre site.

Begin to recover and heal from racial terror by vowing to never repeat it

Near the entrance to the National Memorial, the Peace and Justice Memorial Garden is a serene and beautiful setting for reflection and remembrance.

Located at 414 Caroline Street, across from the entrance to the memorial, the Peace and Justice Memorial Center hosts community events with acclaimed artists, writers, and scholars.

The National Memorial documents the most active era of racial terror lynchings from 1877 to 1950. The monument at the Peace and Justice Memorial Center commemorates 24 people who were killed in racially motivated attacks during the 1950s, including Emmett Till.

The National Memorial expanded in 2022 to celebrate hundreds of community coalitions across the country that have partnered with EJI to install historical markers that memorialize victims of racial terror lynchings.

EJI partners with community coalitions to memorialize documented victims of racial violence by collecting soil at lynching sites. Learn more about our Community Remembrance Project .

Confronting Racial Terror Lynching in America

Confronting Racial Terror Lynching in America

Racial terror lynchings were violent and public acts of torture that traumatized Black people throughout the country. Tolerated and often aided by law enforcement and elected officials and designed to re-establish racial hierarchy after the Civil War, lynching was terrorism.

Racial terror lynching left thousands dead, significantly marginalized Black people politically, financially, and socially, and inflicted deep traumatic wounds on survivors, witnesses, and the entire African American community that fester to this day.

Publicly confronting the truth about our history is the first step towards recovery and reconciliation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The nation's first memorial dedicated to the victims of racial terror lynchings. The memorial uses art to contextualize racial terror and its legacy today.

# data[].attributes.body
Overlooking the Alabama River, Freedom Monument Sculpture Park honors the lives and memories of the 10 million Black people who were enslaved in America and celebrates their courage and resilience.

At this 17-acre site along the very river where tens of thousands of enslaved people were trafficked, breathtaking art and original artifacts invite an immersive, interactive journey and provide a unique view into the lives of enslaved people.

Listen to Muscogee family stories as they were told centuries ago on this very spot. Step inside a train car like those used to traffic enslaved people to Montgomery as you hear trains pass on nearby tracks originally laid by enslaved people. Stand before an authentic dwelling inhabited by enslaved people and marvel at sculptures created from bricks made by enslaved artisans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Opening Soon

At this 17-acre site along the very river where tens of thousands of enslaved people were trafficked, breathtaking art and original artifacts invite an immersive, interactive journey and provide a unique view into the lives of enslaved people.

Listen to Muscogee family stories as they were told centuries ago on this very spot. Step inside a train car like those used to traffic enslaved people to Montgomery as you hear trains pass on nearby tracks originally laid by enslaved people. Stand before an authentic dwelling inhabited by enslaved people and marvel at sculptures created from bricks made by enslaved artisans.

Three Sisters by Cliff Fragua

At the heart of this 17-acre site rises the National Monument to Freedom, which honors four million formerly enslaved Black people who won freedom after the Civil War.

For formerly enslaved people who survived the horrors of slavery, the 1870 census provided the first opportunity to exercise newfound liberty and express deeply rooted hope for the future by officially registering chosen family names.

More than 100,000 names representing millions of Black families are engraved here, forging a connection to the courage, strength, and resilience of ancestors that you can reach out and touch.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Freedom Monument Sculpture Park features the work of world-renowned artists and tells the stories of the enslaved people trafficked through Montgomery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Criminal Justice Reform | Equal Justice Initiative

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EJI is working to end our misguided reliance on over-incarceration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice | TED

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision for a more just and equitable society included a fundamental opposition to the death penalty. To Dr. King, capital punishment was both wrong as a matter of morality and misguided as a matter of policy.

I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime. Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1958, Dr. King led a prayer pilgrimage to Montgomery to protest the State of Alabama's execution of Jeremiah Reeves, a Black 16-year-old accused of raping a white woman and sentenced to death by an all-white jury.

On the steps of the state capital, Dr. King called the execution a "tragic and unsavory injustice" and pointed out "the severity and inequality" of the death penalty, exemplified by the killing of Jeremiah Reeves.

"Full grown white men committing comparable crimes against Negro girls are rarely ever punished, and are never given the death penalty or even a life sentence," he said. But Jeremiah Reeves, "who was little more than a child when he was first arrested, died in the electric chair."

Dr. King's commitment to ending the death penalty was maintained by his widow and family. The late Coretta Scott King-whose husband and mother-in-law both were assassinated-spoke out against the practice. "An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation," she proclaimed. "Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder."

Public support for the death penalty is now at its lowest level in a half-century, with opposition higher than any time since 1966, as more Americans-from police officers to family members of murder victims-recognize that executing people does not make us safer. Instead, as Dr. King put it, "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars."

But many states persist in seeking death sentences, including Alabama.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dr. Martin Luther King's Moral Opposition to the Death Penalty

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To Dr. King, capital punishment was both wrong as a matter of morality and misguided as a matter of policy.

# data[].attributes.body
Racial Justice | Equal Justice Initiative

# data[].attributes.body
Anti-Poverty | Equal Justice Initiative

# data[].attributes.headline
The 1619 Project: Slavery and Our Criminal Justice System

# data[].attributes.subject
The 1619 Project: Slavery and Our Criminal Justice System

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Several years ago, my law office was fighting for the release of a black man who had been condemned, at the age of 16, to die in prison. Matthew was one of 62 Louisiana children sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for nonhomicide offenses. But a case I'd argued at the Supreme Court was part of a 2010 ruling that banned such sentences for juveniles, making our clients eligible for release.

Some had been in prison for nearly 50 years. Almost all had been sent to Angola, a penitentiary considered one of America's most violent and abusive. Angola is immense, larger than Manhattan, covering land once occupied by slave plantations. Our clients there worked in fields under the supervision of horse-riding, shotgun-toting guards who forced them to pick crops, including cotton. Their disciplinary records show that if they refused to pick cotton - or failed to pick it fast enough - they could be punished with time in "the hole," where food was restricted and inmates were sometimes tear-gassed. Still, some black prisoners, including Matthew, considered the despair of the hole preferable to the unbearable degradation of being forced to pick cotton on a plantation at the end of the 20th century. I was fearful that such clients would be denied parole based on their disciplinary records. Some were.

The United States has the highest rate of incarceration of any nation on Earth: We represent 4 percent of the planet's population but 22 percent of its imprisoned. In the early 1970s, our prisons held fewer than 300,000 people; since then, that number has grown to more than 2.2 million, with 4.5 million more on probation or parole. Because of mandatory sentencing and "three strikes" laws, I've found myself representing clients sentenced to life without parole for stealing a bicycle or for simple possession of marijuana. And central to understanding this practice of mass incarceration and excessive punishment is the legacy of slavery.

It took only a few decades after the arrival of enslaved Africans in Virginia before white settlers demanded a new world defined by racial caste. The 1664 General Assembly of Maryland decreed that all Negroes within the province "shall serve durante vita, " hard labor for life. This enslavement would be sustained by the threat of brutal punishment. By 1729, Maryland law authorized punishments of enslaved people including "to have the right hand cut off ... the head severed from the body, the body divided into four quarters, and head and quarters set up in the most public places of the county."

Soon American slavery matured into a perverse regime that denied the humanity of black people while still criminalizing their actions. As the Supreme Court of Alabama explained in 1861, enslaved black people were "capable of committing crimes," and in that capacity were "regarded as persons" - but in most every other sense they were "incapable of performing civil acts" and considered "things, not persons."
[To get updates on The 1619 Project, and for more on race from The New York Times, our weekly Race/Related newsletter.]
The 13th Amendment is credited with ending slavery, but it stopped short of that: It made an exception for those convicted of crimes. After emancipation, black people, once seen as less than fully human "slaves," were seen as less than fully human "criminals." The provisional governor of South Carolina declared in 1865 that they had to be "restrained from theft, idleness, vagrancy and crime." Laws governing slavery were replaced with Black Codes governing free black people - making the criminal-justice system central to new strategies of racial control.

These strategies intensified whenever black people asserted their independence or achieved any measure of success. During Reconstruction, the emergence of black elected officials and entrepreneurs was countered by convict leasing, a scheme in which white policymakers invented offenses used to target black people: vagrancy, loitering, being a group of black people out after dark, seeking employment without a note from a former enslaver. The imprisoned were then "leased" to businesses and farms, where they labored under brutal conditions. An 1887 report in Mississippi found that six months after 204 prisoners were leased to a white man named McDonald, dozens were dead or dying, the prison hospital filled with men whose bodies bore "marks of the most inhuman and brutal treatment ... so poor and emaciated that their bones almost come through the skin."

Anything that challenged the racial hierarchy could be seen as a crime, punished either by the law or by the lynchings that stretched from Mississippi to Minnesota. In 1916, Anthony Crawford was lynched in South Carolina for being successful enough to refuse a low price for his cotton. In 1933, Elizabeth Lawrence was lynched near Birmingham for daring to chastise white children who were throwing rocks at her.

It's not just that this history fostered a view of black people as presumptively criminal. It also cultivated a tolerance for employing any level of brutality in response. In 1904, in Mississippi, a black man was accused of shooting a white landowner who had attacked him. A white mob captured him and the woman with him, cut off their ears and fingers, drilled corkscrews into their flesh and then burned them alive - while hundreds of white spectators enjoyed deviled eggs and lemonade. The landowner's brother, Woods Eastland, presided over the violence; he was later elected district attorney of Scott County, Miss., a position that allowed his son James Eastland, an avowed white supremacist, to serve six terms as a United States senator, becoming president pro tempore from 1972 to 1978.

This appetite for harsh punishment has echoed across the decades. Late in the 20th century, amid protests over civil rights and inequality, a new politics of fear and anger would emerge. Nixon's war on drugs, mandatory minimum sentences, three-strikes laws, children tried as adults, "broken windows" policing - these policies were not as expressly racialized as the Black Codes, but their implementation has been essentially the same. It is black and brown people who are disproportionately targeted, stopped, suspected, incarcerated and shot by the police.

Hundreds of years after the arrival of enslaved Africans, a presumption of danger and criminality still follows black people everywhere. New language has emerged for the noncrimes that have replaced the Black Codes: driving while black, sleeping while black, sitting in a coffee shop while black. All reflect incidents in which African-Americans were mistreated, assaulted or arrested for conduct that would be ignored if they were white. In schools, black kids are suspended and expelled at rates that vastly exceed the punishment of white children for the same behavior.

Inside courtrooms, the problem gets worse. Racial disparities in sentencing are found in almost every crime category. Children as young as 13, almost all black, are sentenced to life imprisonment for nonhomicide offenses. Black defendants are 22 times more likely to receive the death penalty for crimes whose victims are white, rather than black - a type of bias the Supreme Court has declared "inevitable."

The smog created by our history of racial injustice is suffocating and toxic. We are too practiced in ignoring the victimization of any black people tagged as criminal; like Woods Eastland's crowd, too many Americans are willing spectators to horrifying acts, as long as we're assured they're in the interest of maintaining order.

This cannot be the end of the story. In 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit I direct, opened a museum in Montgomery, Ala., dedicated to the legacy of slavery and a memorial honoring thousands of black lynching victims. We must acknowledge the 400 years of injustice that haunt us. I'm encouraged: Half a million people have visited. But I'm also worried, because we are at one of those critical moments in American history when we will either double down on romanticizing our past or accept that there is something better waiting for us.

I recently went to New Orleans to celebrate the release of several of our Angola clients, including Matthew - men who survived the fields and the hole. I realized how important it is to stay hopeful: Hopelessness is the enemy of justice. There were moments of joy that night. But there was also heaviness; we all seemed keenly aware that we were not truly free from the burden of living in a nation that continues to deny and doubt this legacy, and how much work remains to be done.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why American Prisons Owe Their Cruelty to Slavery (Published 2019)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Several years ago, my law office was fighting for the release of a black man who had been condemned, at the age of 16, to die in prison. Matthew was one of 62 Louisiana children sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for nonhomicide offenses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In Alabama, Bryan Stevenson is saving inmates from execution and memorializing the darkest episodes of America's past.

In 1989, a twenty-nine-year-old African-American civil-rights lawyer named Bryan Stevenson moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and founded an organization that became the Equal Justice Initiative. It guarantees legal representation to every inmate on the state's death row. Over the decades, it has handled hundreds of capital cases, and has spared a hundred and twenty-five offenders from execution. In recent years, Stevenson has also argued the appeals of prisoners around the country who were convicted of various crimes as juveniles and given long sentences or life in prison. One was Joe Sullivan, who was thirteen when he was charged in a sexual battery in Pensacola, Florida. Sullivan's original trial, in 1989, established that he and two older boys had burglarized the home of a woman named Lena Bruner on a morning when no one was there. That afternoon, Bruner was sexually assaulted in the home by someone whose face she never saw. The older boys implicated Sullivan, and he was convicted. They served brief sentences. Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole.

In 2005, the Supreme Court decided Roper v. Simmons, a landmark ruling that held that states could no longer execute offenders who had committed their crimes before the age of eighteen. At the time, the Equal Justice Initiative had several clients in Alabama who had been charged when they were teen-agers and were now exempt from execution. To inform them of the ruling, Stevenson went to death row at the Holman Correctional Facility. He described his visit to me as we sat in his windowless office at E.J.I.'s headquarters, a converted warehouse in downtown Montgomery.

"When I went down and started talking to the guys and said, 'I've got great news, they're not going to execute,' it wasn't, like, joy, because they were all still quite young," Stevenson recalled. "It was just another kind of death sentence. 'Oh, seventy more years in prison.' "

But Stevenson saw an opportunity in the Roper ruling. "The Court was saying, in a categorical way, 'Look, children are fundamentally different from adults.' " If the Supreme Court ruled that children were too immature to be sentenced to death, Stevenson reasoned, then they shouldn't be sentenced to life, either. In order to push for an extension of Roper, he needed to find a test case. He began a nationwide search for inmates who had been convicted of crimes as juveniles and sentenced to life without parole.

Joe Sullivan is forty now, and he lives in the Graceville Correctional Facility, a privately run prison in a remote part of northern Florida. His speech is halting and slurred, owing to a long-standing mental disability and to multiple sclerosis, which was diagnosed more than twenty years ago. "I didn't do nothing," Sullivan told me. "I was just with the wrong people at the wrong time. They said I'm the mastermind to everything. They said I did a sexual battery. I couldn't spell 'sex' in those days."

On November 9, 2009, Stevenson stood before the nine Justices of the Supreme Court and began, "Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: Joe Sullivan was thirteen years of age when he was arrested with two older boys, one fifteen and one seventeen, charged with sexual assault, ultimately convicted, and sentenced to life without parole. Joe is one of only two children this age who have ever been sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide, and no child has received this sentence for non-homicide in the last eighteen years." The Justices dismissed Sullivan's case on procedural grounds, but in a companion case, argued earlier that day, they had embraced Stevenson's argument: juveniles in non-homicides could not be sentenced to life.

After the decision, Stevenson took Sullivan's case back to the Florida trial court for resentencing. In light of Sullivan's record in prison, the Florida Department of Corrections informed him that he would be released on June 30, 2014. Sullivan had had a rough time in custody. As a young teen in an adult state prison, he had been the victim of numerous sexual assaults. His current prison was not a violent place, Sullivan told me, but his M.S. had got much worse. "As he became someone who couldn't walk, and needed a wheelchair, the state was terrible in recognizing his needs," Stevenson said. "He was basically in a dorm where he was forced to walk places. This caused mini seizures, which will leave him more impaired." Sullivan had had only sporadic contact with his family over the years, and his only visitors came from E.J.I. In anticipation of his release, Stevenson rented a wheelchair-accessible apartment for Sullivan just outside Montgomery. "Mr. Bryan, he's like my father," Sullivan told me. "He gave me a lot of hope."

Three weeks before Sullivan's scheduled release, he received a notice from the Department of Corrections stating that his release date had been miscalculated. The correct date was December, 2019-more than five years later. Stevenson has gone back to court to challenge the department's determination, but Sullivan remains incarcerated. (State officials have declined to comment.) "It's been very frustrating," Stevenson said. "We were just all set. Joe sent me a Father's Day card. It breaks your heart." Sullivan remains hopeful. "I say, ' PUSH yourself every day,' " he told me. " PUSH -Pray Until Something Happens."

Was the Sullivan case a success or a failure? It was, in one sense, a great victory, because Sullivan, who was facing the prospect of dying in prison, will now be released at some point. But, almost three decades after he was incarcerated, he remains in prison, in a wheelchair. Of course, Stevenson has experienced grimmer disappointments in his career as a death-row lawyer. Stephen Bright, the president and senior counsel of the Southern Center for Human Rights, told me, "Many people do this work only for a period of time. It's a very brutal practice. Your clients get killed."

Stevenson and his colleagues have managed to slow, but not stop, the death-penalty machinery in Alabama-an enormous challenge in view of the state's conservative and racially polarized politics. Alabama has an elected judiciary, and candidates compete to be seen as the toughest on crime. It's also the only death-penalty state in which judges routinely overrule juries that vote against imposing death sentences. (In their campaigns, judges boast about the number of death sentences they've imposed.) Alabama's population is about twenty-seven-per-cent African-American. The nineteen appellate judges who review death sentences, including all the justices on the state Supreme Court, are white and Republican. Forty-one of the state's forty-two elected district attorneys are white, and most are Republican. The state imposes death sentences at the highest rate in the nation, but the Equal Justice Initiative has limited the number of executions to twenty-two in the past decade, and there has been only one in the past three years. "It's just intensive case-by-case litigation," Stevenson told me. "We've gone more aggressively than anyone in the country on racial bias against African-Americans in jury selection. We have extensive litigation on the lethal-injection protocols. We identify inadmissible evidence. We push hard on every issue."

But Stevenson, who is fifty-six, has come to believe that the defense of people enmeshed in the criminal-justice system, while indispensable, is an inadequate response to the deeper flaws in American society. He served on President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, and he has been an ally of the Black Lives Matter movement. The recent police shootings of African-American men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside St. Paul, Minnesota, have increased his pessimism. "These police shootings are symptoms of a larger disease," he told me. "Our society applies a presumption of dangerousness and guilt to young black men, and that's what leads to wrongful arrests and wrongful convictions and wrongful death sentences, not just wrongful shootings. There's no question that we have a long history of seeing people through this lens of racial difference. It's a direct line from slavery to the treatment of black suspects today, and we need to acknowledge the shamefulness of that history."

After a TED talk in 2012, called "We Need to Talk About Injustice," Stevenson is said to have received the longest standing ovation of any speaker, and the talk has been viewed more than five million times on the Internet; it raised a million dollars for his organization, and propelled a death-row lawyer into a public figure. His 2014 memoir, "Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption," spent years on best-seller lists. He is in constant demand as a lecturer across the country, and he's booked for commencement addresses years in advance.

As a longtime resident of Montgomery, he often thinks about Rosa Parks, whose refusal to sit at the back of a local bus in 1955 set off the modern era of the civil-rights movement. "We have reduced her activism to this celebratory tale-'It was all great,' " he told me. "Here's what most people don't know. After the boycott was declared officially over, and black people were sitting on the buses, there was unbelievable violence. There were a dozen people who were shot standing waiting on buses. We had white people going around Montgomery shooting black people who dared to get on the buses." For a time after the boycott, the city shut down bus service altogether. And then, to make way for the I-85 highway, the local authorities, led by a state transportation commissioner who was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan, bulldozed the city's major middle-class black neighborhood.

Stevenson believes that too little attention has been paid to the hostility of whites to the civil-rights movement. "Where did all of those people go?" he said. "They had power in 1965. They voted against the Voting Rights Act, they voted against the Civil Rights Act, they were still here in 1970 and 1975 and 1980. And there was never a time when people said, 'Oh, you know that thing about segregation forever? Oh, we were wrong. We made a mistake. That was not good.' They never said that. And it just shifted. So they stopped saying 'Segregation forever,' and they said, 'Lock them up and throw away the key.' "

That dark view of American history may explain a passage in "Just Mercy," in which Stevenson describes a failed attempt to stop the 2009 execution of a forty-nine-year-old client named Jimmy Dill, who had severe mental impairments. He had wounded a man during a botched drug deal in 1988. Months later, as the victim was recovering, his wife, who had been caring for him, left him, and his health deteriorated. He eventually died, and Dill was resentenced for murder. Dill's mental impairments might well have entitled him to a reprieve from the death penalty, but he couldn't afford lawyers, and missed various procedural deadlines for appeals. When Stevenson took the case, a few weeks before the execution, it was too late. "After working for more than twenty-five years," Stevenson wrote, "I understood that I don't do what I do because it's required or necessary or important. I don't do it because I have no choice. I do what I do because I'm broken, too."

The family of Stevenson's mother, Alice Golden, like that of millions of other African-Americans, took part in the Great Migration from the rural South to the urban North in the early twentieth century. They went from Virginia to Philadelphia, where Alice was born. She later reversed the customary trajectory when she married Howard Stevenson, in 1957, and went south with him, a little more than a hundred miles, to his home town of Milton, in rural Delaware. They had three children: Howard, Bryan, and Christy.

"You have to understand that there are two Delawares," Howard Stevenson told me. "The north, around Wilmington, is basically part of the North, but we lived in the south, which was part of the South. It was very rural, very country. We lived basically in the woods, farm country. We lived next door to my uncle and aunt, and he used to slaughter hogs."

Their mother never forgot her roots in Philadelphia. "She didn't want us to grow up with a southern-Delaware frame of mind," Howard said. "She did all she could to make sure we never forgot the rest of the world. There were places around us with no running water, so Philly was the gateway to the rest of the world." Alice Stevenson placed a heavy emphasis on education; Christmas presents were microscopes, not footballs. She also had strong views on racial equality. "Some of the black folks in southern Delaware were much more deferential in the face of white people," Howard said. "Her style was different. She didn't believe in accepting any kind of racism." Once, when Bryan was in first grade, she wrote a letter to the town newspaper calling for the integration of the local public schools. Another time, a few years later, she protested when the town's public-health officers asked the black children to stand at the back of the line to receive their polio vaccines. "She made such an issue of it that for a moment we weren't sure if they'd even give us our shots," Bryan recalls.

In the sixties, when the Stevenson children were growing up, the neighborhoods, schools, and swimming pools of southern Delaware were all segregated, in fact if not by law. "There was never a time you could get the majority of people in Alabama or Mississippi, or even southern Delaware, to vote to end segregation," Bryan told me. "What changed things was the rule of law, the courts. Brown v. Board of Education was ushered in by a movement, but it was a legal decision. And so, for me, I went down the law path, because to be a politician trying to do anti-discrimination work meant you had to work in a handful of communities that were basically majority black." The jurisdiction of the courts applied everywhere.

Both of Bryan's parents had long commutes to jobs in the northern part of the state. Alice Stevenson had a civilian post at Dover Air Force Base and became what would later be called an equal-opportunity officer, working to insure that African-Americans received fair housing and education. Howard Stevenson was a lab technician at a General Foods plant in Dover. "We believed that our dad thought he could feed us completely based on what he snuck home from G.F.," Bryan told me. "I've avoided Jell-O since I was ten." The Stevenson children absorbed their mother's lessons. Howard Stevenson is a professor of urban education and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania; Christy, the youngest of the three children, teaches music at an elementary school in Delaware.

Bryan followed Howard to Eastern College, a small Baptist-affiliated school outside Philadelphia, where he majored in history and philosophy. Then he applied to Harvard Law School, which turned out to be a disappointment. "The courses seemed esoteric and disconnected from the race and poverty issues that had motivated me to consider the law in the first place," he wrote in his memoir. But as a second-year student, in December, 1983, he took a monthlong internship at what was then called the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, in Atlanta. Stephen Bright, the organization's leader, happened to be on the same flight to Atlanta as Stevenson. "By the time the plane landed, we were very close," Bright recalled. "Bryan had found his calling." He joined the group after graduating, in 1985, replicating his mother's migration south-which worried members of the family. "When I heard he was going on his own down there, I almost fainted," Fred Bailey, Stevenson's cousin and a retired Philadelphia police detective, said. "Bryan's a humble guy and a spiritual guy, and he sees the good in everyone. But he knew no one. And he had no family down there."

Bright's group did death-penalty and prisoners'-rights litigation in a hostile region and era. "We were the dance band on the Titanic, this very small group of eight or nine people trying to hold back this tide of executions in the old Confederacy," Bright said. The lawyers divided up the region, and Stevenson, more or less by happenstance, was assigned the cases in Alabama. He showed an aptitude for death-penalty litigation, which is both emotionally taxing and technically demanding. Capital cases have a complex choreography, involving multiple courts in state and federal jurisdictions, all with their own deadlines, rituals, and rules. Lawyers' mistakes can prove fatal.

The crime rate rose in the late eighties and early nineties, and the few death-penalty lawyers in the South became overwhelmed. In response, a group of lawyers and judges persuaded Congress to fund several state-based death-penalty defense organizations, called resource centers. In 1989, Stevenson, who was still in his late twenties, was appointed to run the Alabama operation. When Republicans took control of Congress after the 1994 midterm elections, one of their first acts was to eliminate funding for the resource centers. Stevenson turned the Alabama resource center into a nonprofit, the Equal Justice Initiative, which survived largely because he was awarded a MacArthur grant the following year, and he used the cash, about three hundred thousand dollars, to keep the organization afloat.

In time, Stevenson achieved a measure of economic stability for E.J.I., thanks mostly to grants from various foundations and a yearly fund-raiser in Manhattan. (With an annual operating budget of six million dollars, the organization now employs seventeen full-time attorneys and twelve legal fellows, young lawyers who spend two years with the group.) "We were having success in overturning these convictions that are wrongful, but it became clear that race was the big burden," Stevenson told me. "By 2006 or 2007, I had begun to realize that we were going to have to get outside the courts and create a different narrative about race, race consciousness, racial bias, and discrimination in history before we can go back into the courts and expect the courts to do the things that they did sixty years ago, or to create the kind of environment where we could actually win."

Around this time, Stevenson began studying Alabama history. He didn't have to look far to find it. The E.J.I. warehouse is on Commerce Street, in Montgomery; the original commerce conducted there was in enslaved people. E.J.I.'s offices stand at nearly the midpoint between the dock on the Alabama River where the human cargo was unloaded and Court Square, which was one of the largest slave-auction sites in the South. Between 1848 and 1860, according to E.J.I.'s research, the Montgomery probate office granted at least a hundred and sixty-four licenses to slave traders operating in the city. Thousands of people were auctioned a few hundred yards from where Stevenson practices law. Slaves awaiting auction were held in chains on the site where E.J.I.'s warehouse was later built.

Montgomery has dozens of cast-iron historical markers celebrating aspects of the Confederate past. Stevenson wanted to put a marker up in front of E.J.I.'s door, to point out the presence of the slave trade. "We went to the Historical Commission and said, 'How do you get a marker up?' " Stevenson recalled. He was told that if he provided accurate information the commission would erect a marker. E.J.I. put together a sixty-page proposal for three markers commemorating the slave trade. Norwood Kerr, of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, e-mailed E.J.I. in response:

I have considered your request for the Alabama Historical Association to support the placement of three historical markers relating to the city's slave trade. While your scholarship appears accurate . . . I do not think it is in the best interests of the Association to sponsor the markers given the potential for controversy.

For several years, Stevenson has taught part time at the New York University School of Law, but he doesn't have his own apartment in the city. He lives on his N.Y.U. earnings and takes no salary from E.J.I. His personal style is nearly ascetic. He has never married. Keeping a promise that he made to his grandmother when he was a teen-ager, he has never let a drop of alcohol pass his lips. (Alcoholism plagued his family.) For years, he lived in a series of small apartments in Montgomery, until he decided to renew his commitment to the piano, which he once played semi-professionally in jazz groups. He decided to buy a piano, then a house, but rarely finds time to play. E.J.I. has no development staff, so Stevenson must raise the six-million-dollar budget virtually alone. Between fund-raising and court appearances, he travels incessantly. Before one of my visits to Montgomery, he had been on planes for twelve consecutive days; before another, seven days.

He has cultivated a network of supporters around the country. In the E.J.I. break room, a state-of-the-art Starbucks machine dispenses free coffee. Since lawyers tend to work late, it gets a lot of use. "This machine has saved lives," Sia Sanneh, a senior attorney for E.J.I., told me. Howard Schultz, the chief executive of Starbucks, said, "Just by coincidence, two people sent me Bryan's book at the same time, and I read it in two or three sittings. I was so moved by his story and his selfless acts, and his humanitarianism, that I reached out and called him cold." They arranged to meet in New York, and then Schultz and his wife visited E.J.I. in Montgomery. "We all meet interesting people, and some of the people don't live up to their press," Schultz said. "Bryan is one of the rare individuals who exceed your expectations." Schultz arranged for "Just Mercy" to be displayed at Starbucks counters for a month; some forty-five thousand copies were sold. Schultz also donated the coffee machine.

The world of public-service lawyering can be competitive and petty, even among ideological allies, but Stevenson's colleagues speak of him with something close to awe. "Bryan is absolutely in a class of his own," Chris Stone, the president of George Soros's Open Society Foundations, which has funded E.J.I., said. "He is a modest, straightforward, ordinary person, and yet he is magical. He is a gift to this country and to a cause that would not be the same without him." Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, said, "Bryan is one of the transformational leaders of my generation. He is one of the great prophetic voices of our era." Barry Scheck, the co-founder of the Innocence Project, said, "Bryan is without question the most inspirational lawyer of our times, not just because he's charismatic, and also a brilliant litigator, but because he connects emotionally with people like no one else." Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "Most of us who do this kind of work are good. He's head and shoulders above us all. He's a genius. He's our Moses."

For all the ties he has forged around the nation, Stevenson is at this point an Alabaman. He knows where to find the pressure points in the local system, a knowledge that he put to good use after the Alabama Historical Association rejected his petition. He enlisted a small organization devoted to African-American history in Alabama as an alternative sponsor. In 2013, E.J.I., with its new ally, was allowed to put up three markers in downtown Montgomery.

During the controversy, Stevenson visited the University of Texas Law School, in Austin, for a conference on the relationship between the death penalty and lynching. Jordan Steiker, the professor who convened the meeting, told me, "In one sense, the death penalty is clearly a substitute for lynching. One of the main justifications for the use of the death penalty, especially in the South, was that it served to avoid lynching. The number of people executed rises tremendously at the end of the lynching era. And there's still incredible overlap between places that had lynching and places that continue to use the death penalty." Drawing on the work of such noted legal scholars as David Garland and Franklin Zimring, Steiker and his sister Carol, a professor at Harvard Law School, have written a forthcoming book, "Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment," which explores the links between lynching and state-sponsored executions. The Steikers write, "The practice of lynching constituted 'a form of unofficial capital punishment' that in its heyday was even more common than the official kind."

Lynchings, which took the form of hangings, shootings, beatings, and other acts of murder, were often public events, urged on by thousands, but by the nineteen-thirties the behavior of the crowds had begun to draw criticism in the North. "The only reason lynchings stopped in the American South was that the spectacle of the crowds cheering these murders was becoming problematic," Stevenson told me. "Local law enforcement was powerless to stop the mob, even if it wanted to. So people in the North started to say that the federal government needed to send in federal troops to protect black people from these acts of terror. No one in power in the South wanted that-so they moved the lynchings indoors, in the form of executions. They guaranteed swift, sure, certain death after the trial, rather than before the trial."

In 2007, Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund, published "On the Courthouse Lawn," which focussed on two lynchings in Maryland. "What I learned is that an alarming number of lynchings took place not in secret, in the woods, but in public, on the beautiful lawns that are still there in all these communities," Ifill told me. "And there is nothing to commemorate these lynchings on those lawns, which are in the center of every town in the South." Lynchings were often covered in local newspapers, and sometimes even previewed in them, and these records were indispensable resources for the E.J.I. researchers.

The staffers at E.J.I., in addition to their legal duties, attempted to identify every lynching that took place in twelve states. They found records for about four thousand lynchings, roughly eight hundred more than in previous counts. Stevenson became convinced that lynching had a historical and a contemporary relevance that needed to be more visible. At first, he imagined erecting more historical markers, but he soon expanded his plan. "One factor, to be honest, was that we started talking about a memorial for 9/11 victims within five years," he said. "It's not as if we haven't waited long enough to begin the process of a memorial for lynching. So that's when it became clear to me that, in addition to the markers, we needed to be talking about a space, a bigger, deeper, richer space. The markers will give you a little snapshot, but we need to tell the whole story."

On a steamy Saturday morning in May, about a hundred volunteers assembled at the warehouse. Stevenson commands a stage without being especially commanding. He's of average height, with a shaved head-a concession to encroaching baldness-and he has the politician's gift for making his set pieces sound as if he were delivering them for the first time.

"I continue to believe that we're not free in this country, that we're not free at birth by a history of racial injustice," he told a diverse group of students, retirees, local activists, and supporters from around the country. "And there are spaces that are occupied by the legacy of that history that weigh on us. We talk a lot about freedom. We talk a lot about equality. We talk a lot about justice. But we're not free. There are shadows that follow us."

His cadence alternates between preachy intensity and lawyerly restraint. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Harvard professor, put it, "There are two different streams of rhetoric in the African-American tradition, the sacred and the secular. Martin Luther King didn't sound like Thurgood Marshall. You can't argue in court like you're preaching in the Abyssinian Baptist Church. But scholars like Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson in recent years have drawn from both traditions. Bryan does, too."

Stevenson told the group, "If you'd come to Montgomery a few years ago, you'd find a city with more than fifty markers or monuments to the Confederacy but hardly a word about slavery. And it's not like in the South we don't want to talk about the past. We love talking about the past." He noted that Alabama still observes Confederate Memorial Day (the last Monday in April) and Jefferson Davis's birthday (celebrated on the first Monday in June). In lieu of a separate Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, the state celebrates a joint Martin Luther King, Jr.-Robert E. Lee holiday. He also pointed out that the two largest high schools in Montgomery are Robert E. Lee High and Jefferson Davis High. "Both overwhelmingly black."

The group had gathered to participate in Stevenson's project to commemorate the history of lynching. "Lynching was racial terrorism," he said. "Old people of color come up to me sometimes and say, 'Mr. Stevenson, I get so angry when I hear someone on TV talking about how they're dealing with domestic terrorism for the first time in our nation's history after 9/11. You need to make them stop saying that, because that's not true.' People who had endured lynchings and bombings and threats had a tremendous shape on our lives. We haven't done a very good job of understanding the legacy of lynching, but the black people that are in Cleveland and Chicago and Detroit and Los Angeles and Oakland and Boston and Minneapolis did not go to those communities merely as immigrants looking for new economic opportunities. They went to those communities as refugees and exiles from the American South."

After Stevenson's speech, the volunteers headed out in small teams to fill gallon-size glass jugs with soil from the sites of the three hundred and sixty-three lynchings that E.J.I. had documented in Alabama. Many of the sites are approximate, and the soil project, which has been going on for about a year, is meant to be symbolic rather than scientific. Along the back wall of the room where Stevenson was speaking were about a hundred jugs already filled with soil. The colors of the soil samples varied, from nearly black, in the Black Belt communities across the middle of the state (which was named for its rich soil as well as for its ethnic composition), to the tan, sandy soil from the Gulf Coast, around Mobile. The names of the victims and the dates of their deaths, which ranged from 1877 to 1950, are marked on the jugs.

The soil-collection project is part of a plan to erect the first national memorial to lynching victims, to be built on six acres of vacant land in downtown Montgomery. The project will cost twenty million dollars, and will include a museum at E.J.I. headquarters. It will transform the look, and perhaps the reputation, of Montgomery. A key part of the plan is a dare to the communities in which the lynchings took place. "We're going to name thousands of people who were the victims of lynchings," Stevenson told the group before they received their trowels and jars. "We're going to create a space where you can walk and spend time and go through that represents these lynchings. But, more than that, we're going to challenge every county in this country where a lynching took place to come and claim a memorial piece-and to erect it in their county."

Montgomery offers the project a rich civil-rights history and low-priced real estate. For the most part, the streets of downtown are quiet, and the sidewalks are empty. (There is no Starbucks.) Stevenson was able to assemble six and a half acres of contiguous abandoned lots that were once the site of a failed public-housing complex, for about six hundred thousand dollars. It's a fifteen-minute walk from the warehouse, and up a small hill above the Greyhound bus station where the Freedom Riders were assaulted in 1961.

From a distance, the lynching memorial, designed by Michael Murphy and a team from the MASS Design Group, of Boston, will look like a long, low colonnade. Once visitors enter the structure and follow the path downhill, they will see that the columns are hanging in the air, as if from trees. Each column is six feet tall. The current plans call for the soil collected by volunteers to be used in coloring their exteriors. There will be eight hundred and one columns, one for each county and state in which a lynching took place. The names of the victims and the dates of the lynchings will be inscribed on the columns.

The memorial also has a more provocative component. Adjacent to the colonnade will be another eight hundred and one columns, exact duplicates. Each county in which a lynching took place will be invited to remove its memorial column and display it in its own community. The columns that remain in Montgomery will stand in mute rebuke to the places that refuse to acknowledge their history of lynching. "For us, it's the kind of activism that has clarity, purpose, and a goal," Stevenson told me. "Sometimes the goals aren't very clear or very well articulated, and you don't know whether you're getting closer or not. This will give us a way of measuring that. We'll know the places that are resisting, and it should build pressure on those communities, and the people in those communities, that are either not doing enough or need to do more."

The city of Montgomery has come to embrace Stevenson's plans, in the name of economic development. Mayor Todd Strange told me last spring, "We certainly appreciate the fact that it's going to lead to a big influx of people who want to come and gain some understanding. Those are good, clean tourist dollars." But he was also aware that, as he put it, "history is a battleground." Stevenson has been cautious about unveiling the project, which recently completed the zoning-approval process. Plans for the memorial had been mentioned only briefly in the Advertiser, the local daily. Strange told me, "Bryan has wanted it quiet. We still today have not made an announcement relative to the museum and the memorial park." For the moment, Stevenson has given the project the generic name of the Memorial for Peace and Justice, which provides no clue that it's all about lynching.

The reaction of Dick Brewbaker, a Republican state senator who represents a district in Montgomery, may presage a less warm welcome. Brewbaker, who is a prominent auto dealer, was not aware of the project when I asked him about it. "If he wants to do it, he needs to do it with private funds," Brewbaker said. (Stevenson has used no government funds.) Brewbaker went on, "Why is racially motivated violence worse than any other kind of violence? I don't give a damn what the motive of the offender was if an act of violence was committed. Interjecting even more race talk into Alabama's politics is not productive." Brewbaker noted that Montgomery has several museums about the civil-rights era, including one devoted to Rosa Parks, another to the Freedom Riders, and a third to the movement as a whole (at the Southern Poverty Law Center). "I'd say the imbalance has been corrected pretty quickly, especially when you consider the Confederate symbols that have been removed." In 2015, Governor Robert Bentley ordered the removal of Confederate battle flags from the grounds of the Capitol. The flags are gone, but the plaques that described them remain.

Stevenson's first round of fund-raising for the memorial and the museum has garnered a two-million-dollar commitment from the Ford Foundation and a million dollars from the charitable arm of Google; he has also earned more than a million from his book, the sale of movie rights, and his relentless speechmaking. That still leaves a considerable gap for a twenty-million-dollar undertaking, which Stevenson hopes, optimistically, will open in 2017. For the moment, he bears the financial burden himself. Darren Walker, of the Ford Foundation, told me, "One of the things I've wanted to do is help Bryan situate his institution in a way that is durable and resilient and not so reliant on him as a charismatic leader." To that end, the Foundation has given E.J.I. a grant to hire a professional development staff.

I wondered how someone who was successfully juggling so many responsibilities could describe himself as "broken." Stevenson told me about the moment when he was talking to his client Jimmy Dill, just before Dill was executed, in 2009. "I've been in that setting before, but there was something different about this, because the man had this speech impediment," Stevenson said. "He couldn't get the words out, and he was going to use the last few minutes of his life-his last struggle was going to be devoted to saying to me, 'Thank you' and 'I love you for what you're trying to do.' I think that's what got to me in a way that few things had. And I, for the first time in my career, just thought, Is there an emotional cost, is there some toll connected to being proximate to all this suffering? I think that's when I realized that my motivation to help condemned people-it's not like I'm some whole person trying to help the broken people that I see along the road. I think I am broken by the injustice that I see."

After Stevenson spoke at the warehouse on that Saturday morning this spring, a fiftyish volunteer named Susan Enzweiler, who had recently retired from a job in historic preservation, received an assignment to visit the site of the lynching of a man named Ebb Calhoun. He died on April 29, 1907, in the village of Pittsview, on Alabama's border with Georgia. According to the materials provided by E.J.I., on the day before the attack Calhoun's son reportedly walked between a white man and his daughter on the street, brushing against the woman. The white man, a "prominent merchant," according to a contemporary report, shoved the son to the ground; the man was already "annoyed by the boisterousness of a large crowd of negroes" in the town that day. E.J.I. gave the approximate address for the lynching as 88 Le Conte Street, in what was described as the central business district of Pittsview.

When Enzweiler and I arrived in Pittsview, we found what appeared to be the shell of a business district. A convenience store and a one-room post office survived, but the structure at what might have been 88 Le Conte was a crumbling brick building. Enzweiler studied the arrangement of the bricks. When bricks were more fragile and less standardized than they are today, builders would alternate "stretchers" (bricks laid lengthwise) with "headers" (bricks with the short side exposed). There were headers every six rows in the building, which Enzweiler took to mean that it was constructed around the beginning of the twentieth century. It had probably been standing at the time of the lynching.

As Enzweiler was looking around, a woman drove up to the post office, across the street. She was a letter carrier. She said that her route covered Pittsview and the neighboring town of Cottonton. "Pittsview is majority black and minority white," she said. "Cottonton is the opposite." She said that the residents on Le Conte where Enzweiler was standing were all white; the residents farther up the block, on the other side of a traffic light, were all black. The road of demarcation between the racial enclaves was called Prudence.

Stevenson had asked the volunteers to try to imagine the events that led to the lynchings. Ebb Calhoun had returned the next day to the site of his son's confrontation. Several white men, including the merchant who had had the altercation with the son, harassed Ebb and then accused him of firing a shot at a visitor from Columbus. A group of whites assembled, surrounded Calhoun, and then shot him dead. "This was the main drag. They executed him in a public place," Enzweiler said. "Mr. Calhoun must have known what was going to happen. He was trying to protect his son, taking the hit that was probably meant for him. Ebb was a hero." She took out her trowel, bent over to brush away pieces of crumbled brick, and began to fill her glass jar with soil. ♦

This article appears in the print edition of the August 22, 2016, issue, with the headline "Justice Delayed."

Jeffrey Toobin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993 and the senior legal analyst for CNN since 2002. He is the author of, most recently, " American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst."
Read more "

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1989, a twenty-nine-year-old African-American civil-rights lawyer named Bryan Stevenson moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and founded an organization that became the Equal Justice Initiative. It guarantees legal representation to every inmate on the state's death row. Over the decades, it has handled hundreds of capital cases, and has spared a hundred and twenty-five offenders from execution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Before I meet with Bryan Stevenson, I tour the museum he opened around the corner from his office. The heat in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, is more Arizona suburb than Gulf riverfront today, but thankfully, the Legacy Museum's employees resist the impulse to blast subzero air conditioning to compensate. The museum has been operating for more than a year now. Though its subject is epic in scope - black history "from slavery to mass incarceration" - its most arresting feature is the row of booths nestled in the back corner. Beyond the slave-auction advertisements, lynching photos, and Jim Crow-era signs barring "Colored" entry to everything from bus depots to diners stands an approximation of a modern-day prison visitation center.

Each booth has a phone and a black leather stool in front of it and contains a screen with a life-sized video recording of a formerly incarcerated person in prison grays. Pick up the receiver and you can listen to them speak. They do so in plain and declarative sentences about prison life - the vindictive guards, the dwindling family visits, the hopelessness of a life where your worst mistake is a pretext for the disavowal of your humanity. Look to the nearest wall and you can see letters from prisoners to their attorneys - in some cases, written to Stevenson himself. Some are from children, scrawled on notebook paper that, in a kinder world, might have been used for homework assignments. Together they amount to an extended plea for mercy, each more plaintive than the last in its yearning for contact with a person who means them no harm.

"I appreciate your observations about the museum, because we were very motivated to make it first-person," Stevenson tells me. We're sitting across a table from one another in an eerily quiet conference room. Were he not dressed in funereal black and white, he'd look like a Buddhist monk: bald, clean-shaven, and serene, with a face that could be anywhere from 35 to 65 years old. (He's 59.) Stevenson is one of the most accomplished defense attorneys in the country. For more than 30 years, he has represented people on death row and children sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Alabama. He and his staff at the Equal Justice Initiative - the Montgomery-based criminal-defense organization he founded in 1989, whose offices we're currently sitting in - have won reversals, relief, or release for over 135 death-row prisoners. He has argued and won five cases before the United States Supreme Court.

The Legacy Museum represents something of a late-career pivot for the veteran attorney. Ten years ago, Stevenson came to believe that Brown v. Board of Education would've been decided differently in 2008 than it was in 1954. "I don't think the Supreme Court would do it," he says of the landmark ruling that outlawed de jure school segregation. "We're not sufficiently committed to equal justice under law." The problem he identified was public sentiment. People did not fully appreciate the history behind the civil-rights gains that, he believed, the courts were becoming less interested in protecting. So Stevenson became a storyteller. He hopped on the lecture circuit and gave a TED Talk about the death penalty. He published a New York Times-best-selling memoir in 2014, titled Just Mercy. He has an HBO documentary, True Justice, about his life and work airing on June 26. In his efforts to reshape the public's understanding of how racism affects society and criminal justice, Stevenson and his staff came up with two concepts that, last year, debuted as major cultural institutions: the Legacy Museum, which I visited before our meeting; and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, billed as the first monument to Americans killed by lynching, which preserves on iron slabs the names of more than 4,000 black victims murdered between 1877 and 1950.

Stevenson's knack for galvanizing narratives is as evident in these facilities as it is when he speaks in public. In talks to large audiences, he dances fluidly between the measured intonation of a therapist and the soaring rhetorical fervor of a preacher. (He grew up in the black church in rural Delaware.) He has a wealth of personal anecdotes to illustrate his expertise and advance his provocative arguments. To make his case against the death penalty, Stevenson tells of a German scholar who once explained to him that her government could never execute people because the Holocaust had nullified its moral legitimacy to do so. (Stevenson thinks America's treatment of black people should prompt the same conclusion here.) To make his case for "getting close" to the condemned and learning more about their lives, Stevenson recalls delivering what seemed like bad news to a prisoner, back when he was a young lawyer with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee: His organization hadn't been able to stay the man's execution, but he wouldn't be killed within the next year. To Stevenson's surprise, the man was ecstatic. Even as the prison guards tightened his shackles to return him to his cell, the man burst into song: "A higher plane, that I have found, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground."

One-on-one, Stevenson is warm, gracious, and relentlessly on-message - though not so much that he evades my questions. He approaches each query as an opportunity to expand its premise, challenge its assumptions, or expose whom it lets off the hook. I ask if he believes that prisoners should have the right to vote - a position that Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed in April. "What's interesting to me is how everybody tries to reduce the issue to something like a litmus test," he replies. "It's not even about the prisoners and the right. It's about all of the optics of, 'Where are you on this kind of spectrum?' And I guess that's sort of what troubles me. Because the closer you are with imprisoned people, or even people coming out of jails and prisons, the more you can actually begin to understand what are the needs, what are the issues, what are the priorities. And I just would love all of the candidates to get closer to populations of imprisoned people."

Barriers to such proximity abound - as evidenced in places like Stevenson's own Legacy Museum. The testimony from prisoners showcased in the booths in the back corner are conspicuous, in part, because such testimony rarely sees daylight. That is by design. "That personal account is so powerful that there is always a reaction against, to limit it," Stevenson says. In prisons today, such repression includes security crackdowns that target communication. A nationwide prison strike last summer drew minimal coverage in part because there were few channels for getting the word out. In-person visits are being increasingly restricted and replaced by glitchy and exorbitantly priced video calls. Prisoners turn to contraband cell phones to maintain their relationships, prompting alarmist press coverage and administrative hand-wringing. "Prison officials say, 'Oh, it's dangerous. They can arrange hits and blah, blah, blah,'" Stevenson says. "It is such a misguided and inaccurate portrayal. If you got every prisoner's phone out and looked into it, they're calling their mom, they're calling their sisters, they're calling their brothers."

But prisoners' narrowing options for communicating seems an especially pressing concern for Stevenson, whose narrative work is so enriched by their stories and the often shocking details therein. He remains undaunted. He points to The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1973 book about Soviet prisons - as an example of how irrepressible such stories are. "You're not going to be able to silence something as compelling as the sort of oppression that I see," he says. This strikes me as a dubious leap of faith - at odds, at least in theory, with the reality that few restrictions exist on how opaque administrators can make prisons if they want to. "I think my hope is not entirely rational," he concedes when pressed. "I guess it's just rooted in this belief that truth crushed to earth ultimately rises again." Irrational belief is not a sentiment that I expect him to admit, but he's right: Belief in the unlikely, even the unseen, is essential to thinking that stories from behind bars will inevitably reach daylight. It is a degree of faith echoed in the biblical metaphors that Stevenson deploys in his speeches, that inform his calls for America's moral transformation. "I don't think you can do this work if you're unwilling to believe things you haven't seen," Stevenson says. "And for many people that's what- faith creates that relationship."

Faith allows him to imagine an Alabama that does not exist. It keeps at bay the indifference of the cosmos and fuels his conviction in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s maxim that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. Faith, Stevenson says, is why he's here: "It wouldn't make sense for me to be in Alabama if I didn't believe." Indeed, his adoptive home state is both an outlier and exemplar of the excesses of mass imprisonment and capital punishment. Like much of America, Alabama imprisons and executes black people at wildly disproportionate rates. Unlike most of the country, it executed prisoners overall at higher rates per capita than all but five other states between 1976 and 2015. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds are tried as adults automatically for some crimes here, including burglary. Stevenson's efforts to transform the status quo have met roadblocks at every turn. But imposing though they are, the signs keep pointing him to what he would call higher ground, fueling his sense of belief. "I have, now, 30 years of amazing things that have happened that reinforced that belief," he says, before departing for another engagement. "I can see it's not entirely scientific and rational. But I do think it's entirely well-founded."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bryan Stevenson on His 'Not Entirely Rational' Quest for Justice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Attorney and activist Bryan Stevenson on how America's racial sins live on in our criminal justice system - and his belief that a transformation is possible.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review

# data[].attributes.headline
Confronting Mass Imprisonment and Restoring Fairness to Collateral Review of Criminal Cases

# data[].attributes.subject
Confronting Mass Imprisonment and Restoring Fairness to Collateral Review of Criminal Cases

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We are haunted by our history of racial injustice in America because we don't talk about it. Ending mass incarceration and achieving equality, justice, and fairness for all Americans starts with learning and sharing the truth about our past.

For more than 30 years, EJI lawyers have been winning relief for clients by telling their stories. We've overturned wrongful convictions and unfair sentences by exposing official misconduct and racial bias. W e've had tremendous success in courtrooms across the country. But America needs a deeper and broader narrative shift to move from mass incarceration into an era of truth and justice: we need to honestly confront our history.

To help people learn, share, talk, and teach about America's history of racial injustice and its legacy, we built a powerful tool kit that includes groundbreaking reports and interactive websites, lesson plans, and powerful films like Just Mercy and the HBO documentary True Justice that underscore the urgency of reform.

We're also harnessing the power of place to change a physical landscape littered with t housands of Confederate monuments but next to none about slavery or lynching. We're working with communities to install historical markers and collect soil from lynching sites, and in 2018, we opened the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. More than 600,000 people have come to Montgomery to learn, remember, and commit to truth telling about our history.

Our Work

EJI's public education projects include bestselling books, documentary and feature films, videos, websites, reports, lesson plans, and community programs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Public Education | Equal Justice Initiative

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We are haunted by our history of racial injustice in America because we don't talk about it. Ending mass incarceration and achieving equality, justice, and fairness for all Americans starts with learning and sharing the truth about our past. For more than 30 years, EJI lawyers have been winning relief for clients by telling their stories.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Right Livelihood Foundation announced yesterday that EJI Director Bryan Stevenson is among four activists honored with the Swedish foundation's annual award.

Established in 1980 to "honour and support courageous people solving global problems," the Right Livelihood Award has become widely known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize.' There are now 182 Laureates from 72 countries.

The Right Livelihood Foundation cited Mr. Stevenson for "his inspiring endeavor to reform the U.S. criminal justice system and advance racial reconciliation in the face of historic trauma."

Working with the condemned and marginalised, Stevenson's compassion has shined a light on the innate worth of each human being.

The Right Livelihood Foundation

The award recognizes EJI's work challenging the historical legacy of institutional racism in the U.S.

"Stevenson's work is rooted in the realisation that society and the justice system are plagued by systemic racism due to the unresolved history of slavery and white supremacy in the US," the foundation said. "This is also manifested by the U.S. having the highest rate of incarceration in the world, disproportionately affecting people of colour and the poor."

EJI's work documenting America's history of racial injustice and urging communities to truthfully confront the legacy of our history "is paving the way for the structural changes needed for societal healing from the country's long and violent history of racial injustice," the foundation observed.

Mr. Stevenson said it is a great honor to receive this award. "We are in the midst of pushing racial justice projects that cause our nation to deal more honestly with the history of racial injustice and racial inequality," he said in a release, "so this support will help us advance that work."

The 2020 Laureates include imprisoned human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh for her activism to promote political freedoms and human rights in Iran; indigenous rights and environmental activist Lottie Cunningham Wren of Nicaragua for her dedication to protecting indigenous lands and communities; and human rights activist Ales Bialiatski for his democracy and human rights work in Belarus.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bryan Stevenson Honored with 2020 Right Livelihood Award

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Right Livelihood Foundation announced yesterday that EJI Director Bryan Stevenson is among four activists honored with the Swedish foundation's annual award. Established in 1980 to "honour and support courageous people solving global problems," the Right Livelihood Award has become widely known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize.'

# data[].attributes.body
The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton

# data[].attributes.body
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Govern...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Read 4,504 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a l...

# data[].attributes.headline
Berkeley Law: "Just Mercy" Supplemental Materials and Reading List

# data[].attributes.subject
Berkeley Law: "Just Mercy" Supplemental Materials and Reading List

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
BOOKS

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, (2010).
Law Library - KF9730.A949 2010Main Library - HV9950.A437 2010
Ebook

Akhil Reed Amar, Selections from America's Constitution, (2005).
Law Library - KF4541 .A87 2005

Introduction

The Rebirth of a Caste

New Rules for a New World

A New Birth of Freedom

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, (1998).
Multiple UCB Libraries - PS3552.A45 A16 1998
XMAC B181 C65
E185.61 B245

Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History, (2002).
Law Library - KF9227.C2 B36 2002Main Library - HV8699 .U5 B367 2003
Main Library - HV8699.U5 B367 2002
ACLS Humanities Ebook

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists, (2014).
Law Library - KF4755 .B66Main Library - E184.A1 B597 2014
Main Library - Earlier Editions

Raymond Bonner, Anatomy of an Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, (2012).
Law Library - KF225.E43 B66 2012
Multiple UCB Libs

William Carrigan, The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836-1916, (2004).
Main Library - HV6481.T4 C37 2004

Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South, (1979).
Law Library - KF224.S36 C37 1979
Law Library - Earlier Editions
Main Library - KF224.S34 C3 1979
Main Library - Earlier Editions
Ebook C1979

Craig Haney, Death by Design: Capital Punishment as Social Psychological System, (2005).
Kadish Library (JSP) - CSLS HV 8699 U5 H365 2005
Main Library - HV8699.U5 H365 2005
Ebook

Ian Haney López, Dog Whistle Politics, (2014).
Law Library - KF4755 .H362 2014 Multiple UCB Libs - E185.615 .H278 2014
Ebook

Cheryl I. Harris, Whiteness as Property, 106 Harvard Law Review 1707 (1993).
Also found in: Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement (1995).
Law Library - KF4755.A75 C7 1995
Multiple UCB Libs - KF4755.A75 C7 1995

Langston Hughes, Selected poems of Langston Hughes, (1990).
Main Library - PS3515.U274 A6 1990

Refugee in America (Words Like Freedom)

James Liebman, The Columbia DeLuna Project, The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution, (2014).
Law Library - KF224.D45 W76 2014
Ebook

Monique W. Morris, Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, (2015).
Social Research Library - LC2731 .M59 2015

Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat, Life Without Parole: America's New Death Penalty (2012).
Law Library - KF9750 .L54 2012
Ebook

Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat, The Road To Abolition?: The Future of Capital Punishment in the United States, (2009).
Law Library - KF9227.C2 R63 2009
Main Library - Law Library - Ebook

Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat, From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America, (2006).
Law Library - KF9227.C2 F76 2006Multiple UCB Libs - KF9227.C2 F76 2006

Wilbert Rideau, In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Redemption, (2010).
Law Library - KFL590.5.A54 R53 2010
Main Library - HV9475.L22 L646 2010

Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, (2010).
Multiple UCB Libs - E185.6.W685 2010

LAW JOURNAL ARTICLES

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Just Mercy Supplemental Materials and Reading List

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
in 2016, UC Berkeley chose Bryan Stevenson's acclaimed 2014 book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, for this year's On the Same Page program. In recognition of the book's impact and importance, copies of Just Mercy were distributed to all incoming first-year students at Berkeley Law and criminal law professors will incorporate the book into their classrooms. [...]

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Harvard Business Review: Diversity and Inclusion

# data[].attributes.body
1) Understand what lack of privilege looks like at work.

People from marginalized groups are likely to experience “stereotype threat.”

Being “different” often comes with the pressure to “code-switch.”

Some marginalized identities may be invisible in a person’s presentation.

When it comes to disability, many people choose not to disclose.

2) Educate yourself on the communities you want to support.

Acknowledge your own biases.

Learn about different identities.

3) Put your allyship to practice.

Speak up when you encounter a bias.

Model inclusive behaviors.

Ask people what they want.

Embrace (inclusive) language as it evolves.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Allyship requires us to become aware of our relative privilege - even within a marginalized community - and make conscious efforts to undo our own biases, champion causes that matter, and act fairly as colleagues and emerging leaders. To be a better ally:

Understand what lack of privilege looks like. Many marginalized communities, for example, face obstacles that make it hard for them to show up as their full selves at work. Educating yourself on these barriers is the first step to becoming an ally.

Learn about the different communities you want to support. When you do, you'll be able to uncover your own unconscious biases and understand how to identify problematic thought patterns and beliefs you may hold.

Finally, put your allyship to practice. Speak up when you encounter a bias, model inclusive behaviors, and embrace inclusive language as it evolves.

One question that often comes up in DEI discussions is: Can individuals really bridge the systemic inequities that continue to plague our workspaces? For those of us who don't hold positional power, what can we do to drive change?

Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Course

Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning's online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.

How to build a better, more just workplace.

Learn More & See All Courses

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Allyship requires us to become aware of our relative privilege - even within a marginalized community - and make conscious efforts to undo our own biases, champion causes that matter, and act fairly as colleagues and emerging leaders. To be a better ally: Understand what lack of privilege looks like.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Anti-Racist Reading List from Ibram X. Kendi - Chicago Public Library

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Anti-Racist Reading List from Ibram X. Kendi by Rattusnorvegicus - a community-created list : "This anti-racist syllabus is for people realizing they were never taught how to be anti-racist. How to treat all the racial groups as equals. How to look at the racial inequity all around and look for the racist policies producing it, and the racist ideas veiling it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Harvard Business Review: Be a Better Ally

# data[].attributes.body
Educate yourself.

Own your privilege.

Accept feedback.

Become a confidant.

Sponsor marginalized coworkers.

Insist on diverse candidates.

Build a community of allies.

"Note that many people are members of two or more marginalized groups. As other scholars have shown, it’s important to acknowledge intersectional identities and how women of color are specifically diminished within these groups."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the United States and many other parts of the world, we're finally engaging in substantive conversations about a once untouchable issue: white male privilege. The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, as well as the systemic inequalities laid bare by the Covid-19 pandemic, have forced people in positions of power-that is, the white men who dominate leadership roles across public and private institutions-to realize that they must step up if there is to be any hope of making organizations more diverse, fair, and inclusive.

Many firms have reacted to recent events-from the revelations of workplace sexual harassment to the spate of brutality against Black Americans-with well-intended press releases and statements reaffirming commitments to social justice. Some have promised to make sizable donations to activist groups, support legal funds, do pro bono work, or create diversity task forces and speaker series. But many of these efforts lack action-oriented plans and targets.

For too long, leaders from majority groups have helped preserve the status quo, which favors them, by relegating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts to human resources instead of using their own power to effect change. This is in some ways understandable: Angie's research shows that many white male leaders deny racism or avoid discussing it because those conversations feel uncomfortable or controversial. They fail to acknowledge their own privilege, insisting that they and their organizations are gender- and color-blind. Very few understand the problem and what steps they can take to be effective allies with marginalized groups.

We view allyship as a strategic mechanism used by individuals to become collaborators, accomplices, and coconspirators who fight injustice and promote equity in the workplace through supportive personal relationships and public acts of sponsorship and advocacy. Allies endeavor to drive systemic improvements to workplace policies, practices, and culture. In a society where customers, employees, and investors increasingly see equity and inclusion as not just a nice-to-have but a must-have, allyship by an organization's senior leaders has become essential. In this article we'll describe evidence-based best practices for becoming an ally, drawing on our decades of work studying how women, people of color, and women of color advance in the workplace. (Note that many people are members of two or more marginalized groups. As other scholars have shown, it's important to acknowledge intersectional identities and how women of color are specifically diminished within these groups.)

While our advice is addressed largely to white men in the United States, we believe it can be used by members of any privileged group who want to create inclusive organizations. Our hope is that the growing attention to systemic U.S. racism and sexism will lead to a global movement toward workplace equality.

Change starts with individual leaders' taking responsibility for their own attitudes and behaviors. There are a number of ways to do this.

Educate yourself.

Do your homework. It can be tempting to simply ask women, people of color, and women of color about their experiences with inequality and injustice. But that unfairly burdens them with emotional and cognitive labor. An ally takes the time to read, listen, watch, and deepen understanding first. White leaders at U.S. companies, for example, should not only study the country's history of systemic racism and the struggles people of color face but also consider how their own behaviors have perpetuated discrimination.

When you do talk to others about the obstacles they've faced, start by requesting their permission. If it's granted, approach with humility and a learning mindset. Good questions include:

I'm curious about the things women/people of color/women of color in this organization find most challenging day-to-day-things that I might not notice. Would you feel comfortable sharing some of what you encounter?

If there was one thing you wish your white male colleagues would do more of to improve the experience of women/people of color/women of color, what would it be?

If there was one thing we could stop doing every day, what would it be?

If you were giving me advice on how to really show up as a colleague to make the workplace fair and welcoming, what would you say?

Recognize that members of an underrepresented group won't all have the same experiences-especially if they're from different cohorts. For example, white women's experiences aren't necessarily similar to those of women of color, who, all our research shows, are particularly marginalized and silenced in organizations. Don't generalize from the stories of one or two colleagues. Talk to many and be attuned to their unique experiences and intersectional identities.

Don't rely too heavily on your own experiences, either. For example, a white male program director at Lockheed Martin had an aha moment when he told a Black woman to bring "a little swagger and attitude" to a client pitch. She quickly responded, "I can't do that," and she was right: She couldn't act the way he could as a white man. Allies need that level of awareness.

Finally, pay vigilant attention to how women, people of color, and women of color experience meetings and other gatherings, and stay alert to inequities and disparities. Transform your perspective as a leader. As one male executive in the global development sector reflected, "Once you put on that lens, you can't take it off. The world never looks the same."

Own your privilege.

Being an ally requires recognizing the advantages, opportunities, resources, and power you've automatically been accorded as a white man while others have been overtly or subtly denied them. This can be painful because it often means admitting that you haven't entirely earned your success. But it's necessary. It's also important to understand that privilege is a resource that can be deployed for good.

As a white male law firm executive explained to David and Brad, "Think about the last time you made a career decision. As a man, you were probably never asked, 'How does this decision affect your wife or kids?' or 'Why are you focusing on your career instead of your family?' That would seem like a weird conversation even in the 21st century. Not so much for women."

White men are also far less likely to have to code-switch-adjust their style of speech, appearance, and behavior to fit into a particular culture and increase their chances of being hired, accepted, or promoted. This is extra work that takes an emotional toll. As one Black professional told Courtney McCluney in her research on this topic, "I find myself constantly trying to be aware of my mannerisms to ensure that I don't portray myself or the people I represent in a negative light."

Accept feedback.

Deliberately seek feedback from marginalized groups, but recognize the power dynamics at play. If women of color, for example, are asked to give advice to white male colleagues when they themselves are not in secure positions (partner, tenured professor, and so on), the request may inadvertently add invisible labor and stress-what Tsedale calls an inclusion tax.

You need to establish trusting relationships with people from marginalized groups (especially those disadvantaged in multiple ways) who will give you unvarnished feedback about your workplace conduct. Receive their comments as a gift. Even when you're surprised or dismayed by what others tell you, show that you value candor. Be thoughtful and sincere. Appropriate responses include:

I recognize I have work to do.

How can I make this right?

I believe you.

Become a confidant.

Tsedale's research shows that Black women who progressed at their law firms typically had trusting relationships with certain white male partners who took a genuine interest in their careers. So let women, people of color, and women of color know that they can confide in you about the slights, dismissals, and aggressions so often encountered in workplaces.

Make yourself available, listen generously, and try to empathize with and validate their experiences. One woman of color, the president of a national trade union, explained how her white male ally did this: "What I most appreciated about him was that he always made time for me and encouraged me to stop by and see him despite how busy he was."

Bring diversity to the table.

Women and people of color-and particularly Black women-are often the "only" in the room, a scenario that can spur outsider and impostor feelings. Allies combat this by inviting more colleagues from marginalized groups to gatherings. When meetings are set up, they ask, "Whose perspective are we missing?" When they notice they're in a room in which everyone looks like them, they say, "Should we ask Angie or Tsedale to join? Are we including their work and expertise?"

Especially if you have positional authority or status, you should use a "pull" approach: In meetings, ask very specific questions of people whose contributions and expertise are often overlooked or devalued, so that alpha white men and their bravado can't hog the floor. It also helps to "decenter" yourself. In societies where racism and sexism abound, the attention in a space will often naturally go to white men. Allies learn to step out of the spotlight by, for example, asking a woman of color to lead a meeting or recommending that a person from an underrepresented group take their place in a high-visibility position or event.

See something, say something.

This is the more-taxing ally work. Vigilantly monitor your workplace for racist or sexist comments and behavior, and then be clear and decisive in shutting them down. Don't wait for marginalized people to react, as they're often accused of "playing the race or gender card"-a tactic used to silence women, people of color, and women of color specifically. When you witness discrimination, don't approach the victim later to offer sympathy. Give him or her your support in the moment.

Also look out for gaslighting-psychological manipulation that creates doubt in victims of sexist or racist aggression, making them question their own memory and sanity. This tactic is designed to invalidate someone's experience. Examples include comments like these: "I'm sure he didn't mean any harm by that. That's just his way." "You might be blowing this out of proportion." "You'll have to learn to be less sensitive." "Can't you take a joke?" "There are so many more important things to focus on right now." If you hear people, whether they are other white men or white women, say something along those lines, respond, "As an organization with a commitment to equality and inclusion, we should take our colleague's concerns seriously. We should deal with this immediately rather than wait for a more convenient time."

Intervene whether or not women, people of color, or women of color are in the room. Explain that you are offended and that such comments or actions aren't acceptable or representative of your organization. Frame the confrontation as a learning or growth opportunity for the person and the team. Assume that your response might be questioned and have your arguments for inclusion-research on its personal, team, and organizational benefits-lined up.

Finally, avoid common mistakes made by people who claim to be allies. Some people who declare themselves to be antiracists think that they're absolved of their own biases and prejudices or do it to put themselves on a higher moral ground. Being an ally is not about making yourself look good or feel better.

Sponsor marginalized coworkers.

Allies seek out talented protégés from entirely different racial and cultural backgrounds and become their vocal fans. They get to know these colleagues' strengths and weaknesses, help them develop as leaders, challenge and encourage them, and tout their abilities and achievements whenever new projects, stretch assignments, or promotions are discussed. They nominate protégés on the basis of their potential, without expecting them to prove they can do a job in advance. This usually requires putting some social capital on the line-a risk sponsors need to get more comfortable with. Finally, allies introduce protégés to key players in their own professional networks to open up an even broader set of opportunities for them.

Cecilia Castelli

In Tsedale's research, sponsorship was shown to be critical to Black women's access to significant training, development, and networking opportunities and advancement. Unfortunately, many white men picked protégés who looked just like them. As Fotoula, a fifth-year law associate without a sponsor, noted, "I think where [the lack of mentorship] really played a role was in not having...people to say, 'Make sure you're at the event. Make sure you speak up and say this. Make sure that you ask about this,' or 'You know what? I heard about a deal that's happening at such and such. I'm going to make sure this partner knows that you're interested.' I'm not saying I was entitled to it," she continued, "but...I know that would have made a difference."

Insist on diverse candidates.

A well-established cause of pay gaps, low retention, and stalled career progression for women, people of color, and especially women of color is bias and discrimination in hiring, professional development, and promotions. White male allies can help colleagues from marginalized groups overcome this hurdle.

If you're hiring, strengthen your own processes. Insist on open job listings and targeted recruiting to avoid an overreliance on referrals, which have been shown to perpetuate workforce homogeneity. Make sure candidate pools are diverse-with at least one person and ideally many people from marginalized groups. Finally, enforce fair application reviews and committee deliberations, watching for and calling out red-flag comments such as "His résumé is really impressive," "It sounds like she's a busy mom," "I'd like to see her prove she can handle this responsibility before we promote her," and "I'm not sure she's a good fit"-language often used to exclude women of color from opportunities. You can respond with something as simple as "Would we be having this conversation about a white man?" You can also get others to hold you accountable-for example, by involving women and people of color in the hiring process or assigning another team member to serve as a " bias interrupter."

Build a community of allies.

Allies can broaden their impact by joining or forming groups of colleagues interested in fighting racism and gender inequality. Look for like-minded people in all parts of your organization, including other units, satellite and remote locations, and employee resource groups, and then grow your base. Focus your advocacy on evidence-based tactics that will drive small wins within your sphere of influence, and create opportunities to interact through networking, mentoring, and professional development events.

If you're a senior leader, you should push for organizational change. No matter where your organization is on its DEI journey, you can champion and lend time and energy to designing and implementing antibias, recruitment, and leadership development initiatives that work.

Iris Bohnet has found that DEI efforts are most successful when leaders clarify their purpose and goals and are transparent about plans and progress. According to Andrew Behar, the CEO of As You Sow, companies that do this will attract and retain the best and brightest employees and reduce risk to shareholders. And we have observed that effective senior allies not only set an example but also outline expectations for everyone's behavior and link outcomes to responsibilities and rewards.

The time to do this work is now. It is because of the vocal and visible protests of women, people of color, and especially women of color that we are even able to write this article. But members of underrepresented groups need powerful white male allies too. We all have an opportunity-and a responsibility-to support change on our own teams, which will ultimately benefit our organizations and society.

A version of this article appeared in the November-December 2020 issue of Harvard Business Review.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements have forced people in positions of power-namely, the white men who dominate institutional leadership roles-to realize they must personally step up to make organizations more fair and inclusive. That means playing a truly active role in helping marginalized colleagues advance (instead of just delegating diversity efforts to human resources).

# data[].attributes.body
1. Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor - Layla F. Saad

2. Trans Allyship Workbook: Building Skills to Support Trans People In Our Lives - Davey Shlasko

3. It's Not About the Burqa - Marlam Khan

4. Five Little Indians - Michelle Good

5. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter - Erika L. Sánchez:

6. Disability Visibility - Alice Wong (Editor), Harriet McBryde Johnson (Contributor), Talila A. Lewis (Contributor)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is the key to success for any company. Developing effective relationships among colleagues is only possible if everyone chooses to be active allies.

Active allies utilize their credibility to create a more inclusive workplace where everyone can excel, be confident, and feel valued. It's up to people who hold positions of privilege to take responsibility for making changes that will help others be successful.

Allyship is the lifelong process.

What is Active Allyship?

Active allyship means taking a proactive approach in supporting individuals within marginalized communities. It's about recognizing not only your privilege, but recognizing that you have the responsibility to use your privilege to make real change. An important part of becoming a better ally is by educating yourself, which will then help to build an inclusive environment in the workplace. This involves:

Listening to the experiences of colleagues who are within marginalized communities.

Learning about the history of prejudice in their country.

Learning how current behaviors, practices, laws, and institutions impact colleagues within marginalized communities

Ask questions and have conversations with fellow colleagues, but make sure you are listening to their own stories and opinions rather than reflecting on your own experiences.

Importance of Educating Ourselves on Becoming Better Allies

Being an ally reduces prejudice, encourages empathy, and can help bring attention to the issues that others experience. One way is for allies to educate themselves about prejudice so they are in a better position to challenge it. Education plays an enormous role in fostering an inclusive and welcoming space, which will increase productivity in the workplace.

Books can be great educators, teaching us about the history of systemic racism or immersing us in stories of people who have different backgrounds and experiences than ourselves. Both learning and unlearning is an essential steps in allyship. Reading about different identities can help you understand the past, present, and future of their communities, and their experiences can therefore help you become a better ally.

Must-Read Books on Allyship

Allyship shouldn't end with increasing your knowledge, but it is an important place to begin. To help you get started, below is a short list of books focused on race and inclusion:

Me and White Supremacy Author: Layla F. Saad : Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
This eye-opening book helps white readers understand their privilege and how they can use it to take action on ending the prejudice against black, indigenous and people of color. Not only will this book examine white privilege, it will also teach you what allyship really means, how to change the way you view race, and how to continue the work of being an activist.

Saad takes readers on a captivating journey filled with expanded definitions, extra resources, journal prompts, and anecdotes to give you the tools to help you improve race relations.

Trans Allyship Workbook Author: Davey Shlasko : Building Skills to Support Trans People In Our Lives
Filled with everything you've been wanting to learn about trans allyship! This workbook has over 100 pages that includes topics on intersectionality, pronoun education, and the best practices to help you provide safe spaces for the transgender population. Shlasko does a great job in guiding readers on how to practice their allyship skills by establishing the 4 A's of Liberatory Consciousness - awareness, analysis, action, and accountability.

With a total of 5 chapters explaining transgender identity, defining what allyship is and other standard definitions, as well as sharing transgender experiences, this book is an excellent resource for those wanting to become a better advocate for the transgender community.

It's Not About the Burqa Author: Marlam Khan
A collection of essays written by 17 Muslim women from poets, lawyers, engineers, researchers, writers, and journalists in the UK. These essays feature topics based on discrimination, immigration, mental health, sex, marriage, queer identity, clothing, stereotypes, and representation.

The stories will make you laugh, cry and scream in anger as each of them expose the raw truths of the oppression, misogyny, and Islamophobia.

This book is highly recommended to those who wish to learn about the experiences of Muslim women and will question the way you think and respond to Muslim feminism.

Five Little Indians
Author: Michelle Good

Five Little Indians dives into the sad reality of the Indian residential school system in Canada. This fiction novel follows the lives of five young adults who survived 'Indian School' in the 1960s, over 30 years. This novel may not be appropriate for sensitive readers as it discusses the abuse children faced during this time and how children were forced onto the streets with no support, money, family ties, or life skills.

While this novel is fiction, some stories are based on actual events, as Michelle Good's mother and grandmother were both survivors of the residential school system. While describing the adult lives of the survivors of the residential school system, the novel explores the themes of the failure of the assimilation theory, post-abuse coping strategies, and the journey to find home.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
Author: Erika L. Sánchez:

This coming-of-age story follows Mexican-American Julia, a Chicago high school student as she navigates her struggles with mental health, family relationships, gender identity, and cultural expectations when her older sister, Olga, dies unexpectedly.

Julia aspires to escape the oppression she experiences daily at home by going to college, which is not an easy road for her.

Sánchez converts this young adult novel into an empowering story that strives to imagine a queer future for Latinx women.

Disability Visibility Authors: Alice Wong (Editor), Harriet McBryde Johnson (Contributor), Talila A. Lewis (Contributor)
Seventeen eye-opening essays all written by disabled people, offering different perspectives that speak to past, present, and future generations. The essays examine the ableism and inequality that disabled people face while also celebrating their wisdom, passion, joy, and successes. This book is intended for readers to think about disabled people as valued members of a community who offer great insight, rather than individuals who need to be "fixed."

It is time for our society to listen and take action on the changes disabled activists have been demanding for so long - and you will be motivated to do so after reading this book.

Tips on Allyship in the Workplace

Here are a few things to consider when being an active ally in the workplace:

Know your Workplace: Knowing your employees and showing them genuine appreciation for them and their interests, needs, and wants will build a sense of trust within your company.

Respect All Perspectives: While the purpose of being an active ally is to honour and respect people's experiences within marginalized communities, there is no single experience. Colleagues are vastly diverse where everyone offers a different perspective. Marginalized employees represent widespread cultures from many backgrounds, not just one. It is important that there are no assumptions made in the workplace as all employees have divergent histories and live through different experiences.

Check Your Privilege: If you are not a part of the Black community, you will never fully understand Black experiences. It is important to pay attention to your own biases and to analyze your own prejudices, contributions to racism, and your relationships with people of color.

Build Relationships: Build effective relationships with Black colleagues by showing genuine curiosity and compassion to their experiences. By listening and being present while they are speaking and showing empathy when they are sharing their ideas or stories, will increase collaboration in the workplace and allow everyone to be an advocate for each other.

Part of combating injustice is taking the time to educate yourself about where it stems from, and how it impacts marginalized communities in society. Reading helps us empathize and question our biases, allowing us to connect with others and understand and accept other perspectives.

Never stop having conversations with colleagues, ask questions, educate yourself, check your own privilege, and show your support in any way that you can. Being an active ally will foster a culture of diversity, empathy and employees will be proud to know that their work is a safe and inclusive place to be in.

Get started with free DEI resources

Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is the key to success for any company. Developing effective relationships among colleagues is only possible if everyone chooses to be active allies.

Active allies utilize their credibility to create a more inclusive workplace where everyone can excel, be confident, and feel valued. It's up to people who hold positions of privilege to take responsibility for making changes that will help others be successful.

Allyship is the lifelong process.

What is Active Allyship?

Active allyship means taking a proactive approach in supporting individuals within marginalized communities. It's about recognizing not only your privilege, but recognizing that you have the responsibility to use your privilege to make real change. An important part of becoming a better ally is by educating yourself, which will then help to build an inclusive environment in the workplace. This involves:

Listening to the experiences of colleagues who are within marginalized communities.

Learning about the history of prejudice in their country.

Learning how current behaviors, practices, laws, and institutions impact colleagues within marginalized communities

Ask questions and have conversations with fellow colleagues, but make sure you are listening to their own stories and opinions rather than reflecting on your own experiences.

Importance of Educating Ourselves on Becoming Better Allies

Being an ally reduces prejudice, encourages empathy, and can help bring attention to the issues that others experience. One way is for allies to educate themselves about prejudice so they are in a better position to challenge it. Education plays an enormous role in fostering an inclusive and welcoming space, which will increase productivity in the workplace.

Books can be great educators, teaching us about the history of systemic racism or immersing us in stories of people who have different backgrounds and experiences than ourselves. Both learning and unlearning is an essential steps in allyship. Reading about different identities can help you understand the past, present, and future of their communities, and their experiences can therefore help you become a better ally.

Must-Read Books on Allyship

Allyship shouldn't end with increasing your knowledge, but it is an important place to begin. To help you get started, below is a short list of books focused on race and inclusion:

Me and White Supremacy Author: Layla F. Saad : Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
This eye-opening book helps white readers understand their privilege and how they can use it to take action on ending the prejudice against black, indigenous and people of color. Not only will this book examine white privilege, it will also teach you what allyship really means, how to change the way you view race, and how to continue the work of being an activist.

Saad takes readers on a captivating journey filled with expanded definitions, extra resources, journal prompts, and anecdotes to give you the tools to help you improve race relations.

Trans Allyship Workbook Author: Davey Shlasko : Building Skills to Support Trans People In Our Lives
Filled with everything you've been wanting to learn about trans allyship! This workbook has over 100 pages that includes topics on intersectionality, pronoun education, and the best practices to help you provide safe spaces for the transgender population. Shlasko does a great job in guiding readers on how to practice their allyship skills by establishing the 4 A's of Liberatory Consciousness - awareness, analysis, action, and accountability.

With a total of 5 chapters explaining transgender identity, defining what allyship is and other standard definitions, as well as sharing transgender experiences, this book is an excellent resource for those wanting to become a better advocate for the transgender community.

It's Not About the Burqa Author: Marlam Khan
A collection of essays written by 17 Muslim women from poets, lawyers, engineers, researchers, writers, and journalists in the UK. These essays feature topics based on discrimination, immigration, mental health, sex, marriage, queer identity, clothing, stereotypes, and representation.

The stories will make you laugh, cry and scream in anger as each of them expose the raw truths of the oppression, misogyny, and Islamophobia.

This book is highly recommended to those who wish to learn about the experiences of Muslim women and will question the way you think and respond to Muslim feminism.

Five Little Indians
Author: Michelle Good

Five Little Indians dives into the sad reality of the Indian residential school system in Canada. This fiction novel follows the lives of five young adults who survived 'Indian School' in the 1960s, over 30 years. This novel may not be appropriate for sensitive readers as it discusses the abuse children faced during this time and how children were forced onto the streets with no support, money, family ties, or life skills.

While this novel is fiction, some stories are based on actual events, as Michelle Good's mother and grandmother were both survivors of the residential school system. While describing the adult lives of the survivors of the residential school system, the novel explores the themes of the failure of the assimilation theory, post-abuse coping strategies, and the journey to find home.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
Author: Erika L. Sánchez:

This coming-of-age story follows Mexican-American Julia, a Chicago high school student as she navigates her struggles with mental health, family relationships, gender identity, and cultural expectations when her older sister, Olga, dies unexpectedly.

Julia aspires to escape the oppression she experiences daily at home by going to college, which is not an easy road for her.

Sánchez converts this young adult novel into an empowering story that strives to imagine a queer future for Latinx women.

Disability Visibility Authors: Alice Wong (Editor), Harriet McBryde Johnson (Contributor), Talila A. Lewis (Contributor)
Seventeen eye-opening essays all written by disabled people, offering different perspectives that speak to past, present, and future generations. The essays examine the ableism and inequality that disabled people face while also celebrating their wisdom, passion, joy, and successes. This book is intended for readers to think about disabled people as valued members of a community who offer great insight, rather than individuals who need to be "fixed."

It is time for our society to listen and take action on the changes disabled activists have been demanding for so long - and you will be motivated to do so after reading this book.

Tips on Allyship in the Workplace

Here are a few things to consider when being an active ally in the workplace:

Know your Workplace: Knowing your employees and showing them genuine appreciation for them and their interests, needs, and wants will build a sense of trust within your company.

Respect All Perspectives: While the purpose of being an active ally is to honour and respect people's experiences within marginalized communities, there is no single experience. Colleagues are vastly diverse where everyone offers a different perspective. Marginalized employees represent widespread cultures from many backgrounds, not just one. It is important that there are no assumptions made in the workplace as all employees have divergent histories and live through different experiences.

Check Your Privilege: If you are not a part of the Black community, you will never fully understand Black experiences. It is important to pay attention to your own biases and to analyze your own prejudices, contributions to racism, and your relationships with people of color.

Build Relationships: Build effective relationships with Black colleagues by showing genuine curiosity and compassion to their experiences. By listening and being present while they are speaking and showing empathy when they are sharing their ideas or stories, will increase collaboration in the workplace and allow everyone to be an advocate for each other.

Part of combating injustice is taking the time to educate yourself about where it stems from, and how it impacts marginalized communities in society. Reading helps us empathize and question our biases, allowing us to connect with others and understand and accept other perspectives.

Never stop having conversations with colleagues, ask questions, educate yourself, check your own privilege, and show your support in any way that you can. Being an active ally will foster a culture of diversity, empathy and employees will be proud to know that their work is a safe and inclusive place to be in.

Get started with free DEI resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 Books Every Ally Should Read - CultureAlly

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about Active Allyship, Why it's Important at Work, and 6 Must Read Books on Allyship that covers stories from Indigenous, Latinx, Trans, and other communities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
subscribe to Code Switch podcast

subscribe to Code Switch podcast

As of Friday, 15 of the top 20 bestselling books on Amazon were about race or racism. Earlier this week, Code Switch was number one on Apple Podcasts - which, as host Gene Demby said, is "dope," but unfortunately occurred under "soul-crushing circumstances." And The Help is trending on Netflix (ahem, a film that drew immediate ire upon release).

We're in the middle of one of those awfully predictable news cycles - a video of police killing a black person goes viral, protests ensue and broader America suddenly realizes we need to talk about race. Of course, while this week has happened before, it's also happening on a much larger scale than ever before, with demonstrations in all 50 states.

To help people be better allies, lists of antiracist books, films and podcasts are being published in droves. There's never a bad time to learn, but such a list can become erroneously prescriptive, a balm to centuries-old lacerations that cut deeper than the individual reader. As Lauren Michele Jackson wrote for Vulture, "The word [anti-racism] and its nominal equivalent, "anti-racist," suggests something of a vanity project, where the goal is no longer to learn more about race, power, and capital, but to spring closer to the enlightened order of the antiracist."

So, with that in mind, we've compiled a list of books, films and podcasts about systemic racism, acknowledging that they are just books, films and podcasts. You'll find research on how racism permeates everything from the criminal justice system to health care. We hope you spend some time with these resources (and that you listen to Code Switch - here's a list of episodes to get you started). Information is power - you decide what you do with it.

Books

This classic text on the psychology of racism was re-released with new content in 2017, 20 years after its original publication. By providing straight talk on self-segregation and inequality in schools, Tatum shows the importance - and possibility - of cross-racial dialogues starting young.

A finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in History, Race for Profit chronicles how the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 failed to stop racist, exploitative mortgage lending practices. Since the policy was supposed to be a balm to the 1960s uprisings - much like the ones we're seeing now - it serves as a reminder to remain vigilant when policymakers promise change.

From lead poisoning to toxic waste, Americans of color are disproportionately harmed by environmental hazards. This is detrimental to physical health - air pollution is linked with higher COVID-19 death rates, according to Harvard researchers. But Washington also argues that environmental racism is causing cognitive decline in communities of color. A deconstruction of IQ and an indictment of EPA rollbacks, A Terrible Thing To Waste is a stirring read.

The origins of mass incarceration - which disproportionately puts black people behind bars - are often pinned on Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. But Hinton argues the carceral state was erected "by a consensus of liberals and conservatives who privileged punitive responses to urban problems as a reaction to the civil rights movement." The 1965 Law Enforcement Assistance Act, part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society plan, led to today's police militarization. This account of history poses relevant questions for today's land of the free.

Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poorby Virginia Eubanks

Algorithms are made by humans, so they are susceptible to human biases. From deciding which neighborhoods get policed to who gets welfare benefits, discrimination has gone digital. By scrutinizing statistical models and telling personal stories, Eubanks shows that machines do not correct racist systems - they only shift blame.

In the wake of high-profile cases of police brutality, the same ideas for reform are trotted out - implicit bias training, body cameras, police-community dialogues. But Vitale argues that this fails to get to the root of the problem - policing itself. While calls to abolish the police are often met with skepticism, academics and activists have long-discussed alternatives to addressing homelessness, domestic disputes and substance abuse. A free ebook of The End of Policing is available now. (And you can read Code Switch editor extraordinaire Leah Donnella's conversation with Vitale here.)

As young Americans take to the streets to say black lives matter, they're often told to vote. While voting is important, it's also important to remember how black political representation has been chipped away by voter ID laws, gerrymandering and felon disenfranchisement. Blackballed addresses the struggle for voting rights and for racial equality more broadly, drawing on Pinckney's own experiences and writings of civil rights leaders to create a complicated picture of black political identity.

"Entitlement mentality." "Quotas." "Welfare queens." From Barry Goldwater to Bill Clinton to the Tea Party, politicians have relied on racially coded language to win over white voters and decimate social programs. Dog Whistle Politics makes the case that not only does this strategy endanger people of color, but it also hinders economic mobility for all Americans.

Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecologyby Deirdre Cooper Owens

The foundational knowledge of American gynecology relied on the exploitation of enslaved black women's bodies. In Medical Bondage, Cooper Owens centers the stories of black women that have been overshadowed by the "discoveries" of white male doctors who experimented on them. Baseless theories about black inferiority and higher pain tolerance still permeate medical schools today.

The Black Panther Party is most remembered for its militant action, but health care was also a major pillar of its activism. The People's Free Medical Clinics tested for hypertension and assisted with housing and employment. Its outreach also brought attention to rampant discrimination within mainstream medicine. Nelson writes that the Black Panther Party understood health as a human right, echoing today's fight for universal health care. You can read Body and Soul online for free.

Films

The U.S. imprisons more people than any other country in the world, and a third of U.S. prisoners are black. In this infuriating documentary, director Ava DuVernay argues that mass incarceration, Jim Crow and slavery are "the three major racialized systems of control adopted in the United States to date."

Narrated by the words of James Baldwin with the voice of Samuel L. Jackson, I Am Not Your Negro connects the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter. Although Baldwin died nearly 30 years before the film's release, his observations about racial conflict are as incisive today as they were when he made them.

The 2014 killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Mo. was one of the deaths that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. Frustrated by media coverage of unrest in Ferguson, co-directors Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis documented how locals felt about police in riot gear filling their neighborhoods with tear gas. As one resident says, "They don't tell you the fact that the police showed up to a peaceful candlelight vigil...and boxed them in, and forced them onto a QuikTrip lot."

LA 92 is about the Los Angeles riots that occurred in response to the police beating of Rodney King. The film is entirely comprised of archival footage - no talking heads needed. It's chilling to watch the unrest of nearly 30 years ago, as young people still take to the streets and shout, "No justice, no peace."

Over 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, American schools are still segregated. Teach Us All explains why that is - school choice, residential segregation, biased admissions processes - and talks to advocates working for change. Interspersing interviews from two Little Rock Nine members, the documentary asks how far we've really come.

In this two-part series, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. chronicles the last 50 years of black history through a personal lens. Released days after the 2016 election, some themes of the documentary took on a deeper meaning amid Donald Trump's win. "Think of the civil rights movement to the present as a second Reconstruction - a 50-year Reconstruction - that ended last night," Gates said in an interview with Salon.

Podcasts

An audio documentary about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Floodlines is told from the perspective of four New Orleanians still living with the consequences of governmental neglect. As COVID-19 disproportionately infects and kills Americans of color, the story feels especially relevant. "As a person of color, you always have it in the back of your mind that the government really doesn't care about you," said self-described Katrina overcomer Alice Craft-Kerney.

"In August of 1619, a ship carrying more than 20 enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began." Hosted by recent Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones, the 1619 audio series chronicles how black people have been central to building American democracy, music, wealth and more.

Intersectionality Matters! from The African American Policy Forum

Hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a leading critical race theorist who coined the term "intersectionality," this podcast brings the academic term to life. Each episode brings together lively political organizers, journalists and writers. This recent episode on COVID-19 in prisons and other areas of confinement is a must-listen.

Every week at Throughline, our palsRund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei "go back in time to understand the present." To understand the history of systemic racism in America, we recommend " American Police," " Mass Incarceration" and " Milliken v. Bradley."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
This List Of Books, Films And Podcasts About Racism Is A Start, Not A Panacea

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
subscribe to Code Switch podcast subscribe to Code Switch podcast As of Friday, 15 of the top 20 bestselling books on Amazon were about race or racism. Earlier this week, Code Switch was number one on Apple Podcasts - which, as host Gene Demby said, is "dope," but unfortunately occurred under "soul-crushing circumstances."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Most of us have only scratched the surface when it comes to understanding racism in America. These anti-racism books can help you gain further insight and become a true ally.

Our editors and experts handpick every product we feature. We may earn a commission from your purchases.

rd.com, via bookshop.org (3)

Anti-racism books that make a difference

When it comes to understanding race and social justice in this country, authors of the most prominent books about racism have a message: Skip the announcements about your good intentions and instead settle in to do the hard work. Investing in our own understanding of systemic racism allows us to reflect on our own behavior and learn to do better. It's also important to realize this work is not the responsibility of any one race-it must be shared by everyone who wants a better and more fair country. The best books on race, culture, and allyship are a good place to start if you truly want to understand the history and underlying context of racism in America.

On this list, you'll find thought-provoking, informative nonfiction books by a variety of scholars, historians, and social justice writers, including well-known Black authors and female authors. These works have won numerous awards-from Pulitzers to National Book Critics Circle awards-or sparked national conversations that have changed the way we look at certain aspects of this topic, and they are all definite must-reads.

You can purchase these titles at Bookshop.org, an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent booksellers, and do your part to support an independent and/or Black-owned bookstore in the process.
Join the free for great reads, monthly discussions, author Q&As and a community of book lovers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
20 Books About Racism Everyone Should Read

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Think you understand racism in America? Think again. But these books on anti-racism and White privilege can help you gain further insight.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As protests over the death of George Floyd erupted across the nation, with thousands demanding action against decades of racial injustice and police brutality, a national conversation has transpired in America about the value of black lives, racism, white privilege and responsibility.

For anyone who wants to be a strong white ally, the first step is to educate yourself. The burden shouldn't be placed on people of color to educate white people about issues of racial injustice, advocates say.

"By and large, racial literacy for white people requires really knowing the true history of the U.S. which many of us do not learn in school. There is no blame or shame there, but we can't really recognize the current racial dynamics in the U.S. without understanding the history," said Ali Michael, the co-founder and director of the Race Institute for K-12 Educators and author of "Raising Race Questions: Whiteness, Inquiry and Education." "The thing about books is you have to look at your own lens and figure out where you need to grow."

Three prominent authors on issues of racial injustice -- Tim Wise, Ali Michael and Paul Kivel -- shared their recommended reading lists to help people learn about these issues and understand the complexities of the George Floyd protests.

"White Americans can be an ally right now by really listening to what black and brown folks are saying," Tim Wise, author of seven books on racism and white privilege including "Dear White America," said. "If you want to understand what it is like to be black in America, you have to listen to what black Americans are telling you, but also how your own life has been affected by race. Once we do that, we stay connected to the cause because it's not abstract anymore. It's part of us."

"I think what people of color are asking for is for white people to actually show up and do things," Paul Kivel, author of "Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice," said. "There is a lot that can be done. There are letters to write, calls to be made, emails to write to authorities in Minneapolis. There's lots of local work to do with local organizations that are fighting for resources for communities of color in the pandemic."

Read on for their picks.
"White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son" by Tim Wise
"A lot of white folks over the years have told me ['White Like Me'] made a huge difference in their understanding of race because it's a personal narrative and a story, rather than a bunch of facts, figures and studies," Wise said. "It's something white Americans can relate to and their kids can relate to. You don't have to be an academic to connect to it."

ABC News Photo Illustration

"White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide" by Carol Anderson
Carol Anderson looks back in history at the flash points in America opposing social progress for blacks to reframe the national conversation about race in America.

"It's a short, simple history about the racial divide in America -- but really approachable," Wise said.
"The Guide for White Women who Teach Black Boys" by Eddie Moore Jr, Ali Michael, and Marguerite Penick-Parks
"The book helps people understand both the broad diversity and multiplicity of black boys and men in our country, as well as the ways in which they are constantly placed in this black boy or black man box, and that their lives are constrained by that box," Michael said. "I don't think you can read that book and not have your lens change."

ABC News Photo Illustration

"What White Children Need to Know About Race," by Ali Michael.
"It's an article I wrote... it seemed to resonate with white parents across the country," Michael said. "All my work has focused on helping white people begin to identify as white and see that racism impacts white people as well as people of color. It's not something that's just committed by violent, overt racists who self-identify as white supremacists. When we start to name whiteness as part of the racial dynamic in the U.S., then white people start to see themselves as part of the equation and part of the solution."
"White By Law" by Ian Haney López
Ian Haney López takes a deep dive into the intersection of race and law in American society. The book is cited widely by legal scholars and academics on race and culture in politics.

"['White By Law'] takes a detailed look at the history of racism as it has been written into U.S. law," Michael said.
"Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice" by Paul Kivel.
"It's meant to be a tool kit for white people with lots of information and resources, exercises and questions to look at how racism works and what the history is," Kivel said. "There is also a lot of practical guidelines for how to get involved, what to do now in different areas of our lives in terms of family, community and workplace."

ABC News Photo Illustration

"So You Want to Talk About Race" by Ijeoma Oluo
"It's very straight forward and covers a lot of basic information from the perspective of an African American woman and it's very accessible," Kivel said. "I think for a lot of white people, it's a great way to try and understand the whole picture and the role white people play in it."
"Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates
"It's a very personal, detailed account of how racism has worked in the author's life," Kivel said. "Not only for him, but how he thinks about his son and other black folks around him and in the community. It kind of takes a white reader into the every day realities and injustices that happen to people of color, particularly black people."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Here are 8 books on race and privilege to learn how to be a white ally

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Three prominent authors on issues of racial injustice share their recommended reading lists to help learn about racism, white privilege and responsibility.

# data[].attributes.headline
1. The title of the book refers to two essential concepts, Justice and Mercy, that are crucial to the legal system. What do these two terms mean to you personally? 

# data[].attributes.subject
1. The title of the book refers to two essential concepts, Justice and Mercy, that are crucial to the legal system. What do these two terms mean to you personally? 

# data[].attributes.headline
2. Stevenson shared several examples of low-income individuals and/or people of color in difficult circumstances being presumed guilty before presenting their cases. Do you think race and class should factor into a court case? How about in a college admissions process or decisions about scholarships or financial aid?

# data[].attributes.subject
2. Stevenson shared several examples of low-income individuals and/or people of color in difficult circumstances being presumed guilty before presenting their cases. Do you think race and class should factor into a court case? How about in a college admissions process or decisions about scholarships or financial aid?

# data[].attributes.headline
3. Stevenson remembers his grandmother telling him, “You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. You have to get close.” How do we see the author getting close to issues of punishment and mass incarceration?  In our own environments how could we “get CLOSE”  to the issues that are most important to us?

# data[].attributes.subject
3. Stevenson remembers his grandmother telling him, “You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. You have to get close.” How do we see the author getting close to issues of punishment and mass incarceration?  In our own environments how could we “get CLOSE”  to the issues that are most important to us?

# data[].attributes.headline
4. What factors prevent mitigating evidence (information about a person’s background and upbringing that may reduce punishment for an offense) from being presented at trial? What does Stevenson mean when he writes, “We all need mitigation at some point”? How can sharing your own background with fellow members of your community help establish relationships within the  community?

# data[].attributes.subject
4. What factors prevent mitigating evidence (information about a person’s background and upbringing that may reduce punishment for an offense) from being presented at trial? What does Stevenson mean when he writes, “We all need mitigation at some point”? How can sharing your own background with fellow members of your community help establish relationships within the  community?

# data[].attributes.headline
5. Do you think Stevenson had any idea that representing indigent, incarcerated people was going to be his life’s work? How did he take care of himself while doing difficult and exhausting work? What did he struggle with and what kept him from quitting as he beat the drum for justice? As you move between duty stations and manage your own careers and then your life’s work, how will you stay energized without burning out?

# data[].attributes.subject
5. Do you think Stevenson had any idea that representing indigent, incarcerated people was going to be his life’s work? How did he take care of himself while doing difficult and exhausting work? What did he struggle with and what kept him from quitting as he beat the drum for justice? As you move between duty stations and manage your own careers and then your life’s work, how will you stay energized without burning out?

# data[].attributes.headline
1. What is the significance of the title "Just Mercy"? 

# data[].attributes.subject
1. What is the significance of the title "Just Mercy"? 

# data[].attributes.headline
2. Prior to watching the movie, were you familiar with Bryan Stevenson or any of the clients portrayed?

# data[].attributes.subject
2. Prior to watching the movie, were you familiar with Bryan Stevenson or any of the clients portrayed?

# data[].attributes.headline
3. What differences did you notice between the movie and the book? 

# data[].attributes.subject
3. What differences did you notice between the movie and the book? 

# data[].attributes.headline
4. Have you read/seen "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. Were there any similarities between the two books/films? 

# data[].attributes.subject
4. Have you read/seen "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. Were there any similarities between the two books/films? 

# data[].attributes.headline
5. Who was your favorite character in the movie? Who was your least favorite character?

# data[].attributes.subject
5. Who was your favorite character in the movie? Who was your least favorite character?

# data[].attributes.headline
6. Have you ever experienced being accused of wrongdoing even though you were innocent or did the correct thing? Ex. Getting in trouble when someone else was responsible.

# data[].attributes.subject
6. Have you ever experienced being accused of wrongdoing even though you were innocent or did the correct thing? Ex. Getting in trouble when someone else was responsible.

# data[].attributes.headline
7. Walter's family and community came together to support him throughout his time of imprisonment and trials. Would you have supported him in the same way or done anything different?

# data[].attributes.subject
7. Walter's family and community came together to support him throughout his time of imprisonment and trials. Would you have supported him in the same way or done anything different?

# data[].attributes.headline
8. Were there any issues in the movie that are prevalent in today's society? Has there been any progress or changes to resolve the issues?

# data[].attributes.subject
8. Were there any issues in the movie that are prevalent in today's society? Has there been any progress or changes to resolve the issues?

# data[].attributes.headline
9. The end of the movie included facts about the real life characters. What was your reaction upon seeing the film clips and photos?

# data[].attributes.subject
9. The end of the movie included facts about the real life characters. What was your reaction upon seeing the film clips and photos?

# data[].attributes.headline
10. What are your thoughts on the statistic: "For every 9 people who have been executed in the U.S., 1 person on death row has been proven innocent and released, a shocking rate of error."

# data[].attributes.subject
10. What are your thoughts on the statistic: "For every 9 people who have been executed in the U.S., 1 person on death row has been proven innocent and released, a shocking rate of error."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A Story of Justice and Redemption

A powerful true story about the Equal Justice Initiative, the people we represent, and the importance of confronting injustice, Just Mercy is a bestselling book by Bryan Stevenson that has been adapted into a feature film.

About EJI &
Bryan Stevenson

Equal Justice Initiative

EJI is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, challenging racial and economic injustice, and protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society. Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located in Montgomery, Alabama.

LEARN MORE ABOUT EJI

Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. A widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned, he has won numerous awards, including the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Prize and the ACLU's National Medal of Liberty.

JUST MERCY - #1 New York Times Bestseller

The Book

An unforgettable true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to end mass incarceration in America - from one of the most inspiring lawyers of our time.

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law office in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated to defending the poor, the incarcerated, and the wrongly condemned.

Just Mercy tells the story of EJI, from the early days with a small staff facing the nation's highest death sentencing and execution rates, through a successful campaign to challenge the cruel practice of sentencing children to die in prison, to revolutionary projects designed to confront Americans with our history of racial injustice.

One of EJI's first clients was Walter McMillian, a young Black man who was sentenced to die for the murder of a young white woman that he didn't commit. The case exemplifies how the death penalty in America is a direct descendant of lynching - a system that treats the rich and guilty better than the poor and innocent.

Download discussion guide

The message of this book . . . is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be made. Just Mercy will make you upset and it will make you hopeful.

Ted Conover / The New York Times Book Review

Selected as a

New York Times Best Seller

Winner of the

Dayton Literary Peace Prize

Winner of a

NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction

Finalist for the

Kirkus Reviews Prize

Winner of a

Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

Selected as a

An American Library Association Notable Book

The Movie

Just Mercy takes us inside America's broken criminal justice system and compels us to confront inequality and injustice.

Based on the bestselling book, the Just Mercy movie presents the unforgettable story of Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) and the case of Walter McMillian (Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx), who was convicted and sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit.

Download discussion guide

I spent most of Just Mercy devastated by its most rueful death-row inmate, only to belatedly realize that it was [Rob] Morgan who was breaking my heart.

Wesley Morris / The New York Times

Just Mercy is a handsome, impeccably mounted tribute to [Stevenson's] activism and also his fellow advocates.

Justin Chang / Los Angeles Times

Winner of

ABA Silver Gavel Award

Winner of the National Board of Review's

Freedom of Expression Award

Earned audience score of

99% on Rotten Tomatoes

Michael B. Jordan Winner of

BET Award for Best Actor

Winner of

Christopher Award

Winner of

Four NAACP Image Awards

Winner of American Black Film Festival

Movie of the Year

Jamie Foxx Winner of American Black Film Festival

Excellence in the Arts Award

Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, Rob Morgan, Tim Blake Nelson, Andrene Ward-Hammond, O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Karan Kendrick

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He had barely opened the nonprofit law office in Montgomery, Alabama, when he agreed to represent Walter McMillian, a Black man wrongly convicted of killing a white woman in the town that inspired To Kill a Mockingbird.

Clients

Just Mercy tells the story of EJI's clients, from Walter McMillian and Anthony Ray Hinton - who were exonerated from Alabama's death row - to Joe Sullivan and Ian Manuel - who won release after being sentenced to die in prison for nonhomicide crimes in Florida when they were just 13 years old. We invite you to learn more about the clients featured in the book below.

Sign up to stay connected and receive updates about EJI's work.

By submitting this form, you are granting: Equal Justice Initiative, 122 Commerce Street, Montgomery, Alabama, 36104, United States, http://www.eji.org permission to email you. You may unsubscribe via the link found at the bottom of every email. (See our Email Privacy Policy for details.) Emails are serviced by Mailchimp.

FAQ

If you have additional questions about Just Mercy or the work of EJI, please visit eji.org.

Is Just Mercy a true story?

Yes. The movie is based on an actual case that is detailed in Bryan Stevenson's book, Just Mercy, published in 2014. Bryan took on Walter McMillian's case in 1988 to challenge his wrongful conviction and death sentence. Over the next six years, Bryan filed multiple legal challenges and conducted several hearings, but the trial court refused to grant Mr. McMillian a new trial despite overwhelming evidence of innocence, including the recantation of the State's main witness, Ralph Myers. Bryan appealed the ruling and the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a new trial because the State withheld evidence of Mr. McMillian's innocence. Bryan filed a motion to dismiss all charges; the trial court granted it after the district attorney acknowledged Mr. McMillian's innocence. While the movie condenses the six years of litigation, it mostly tracks the actual account presented in the book. Mr. McMillian's claim of innocence attracted national attention as broadcast a story about the case. The movie accurately introduces other people represented by Bryan Stevenson, including Herbert Richardson, a Vietnam War veteran who was executed in 1989, and Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent nearly 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit.

What made the Walter McMillian case unique?

Sadly, while the McMillian case had some unique features, there are actually lots of people who are innocent who have been sentenced to death in the United States. Because Mr. McMillian was accused of a crime that took place in Monroeville, Alabama, the community where Harper Lee grew up and wrote the beloved novel To Kill a Mockingbird, there were interesting dynamics at play in the case. While the Monroeville community loves the Mockingbird story and took great pride in its association with the fictional characters of the book, there was tremendous resistance to recognizing Mr. McMillian's innocence despite overwhelming evidence. Walter McMillian and Ralph Myers were both placed on death row before going to trial, which is illegal and a rare form of coercion. After Mr. Myers agreed to give false testimony against Mr. McMillian, he was removed from death row. Mr. McMillian spent 15 months on death row awaiting his trial in an effort to pressure him into pleading guilty. The case was unique as well because the trial judge, Robert E. Lee Key Jr., moved the trial from Monroe County, which is over 40% Black, to Baldwin County, which had a much smaller Black population, making a nearly all-white jury more likely. Despite that change of venue, the jury that convicted Mr. McMillian of capital murder sentenced him to life imprisonment without parole. In Alabama, the trial judge has the authority to override a jury's verdict of life and impose the death penalty, which is what happened. Judge override of life verdicts has been a unique characteristic of the death penalty in Alabama. The Walter McMillian case is also significant because it was one of the very early cases where a death row prisoner was proved innocent after being sentenced to death despite death penalty reforms in the 1970s and early 1980s.

What happened to Walter McMillian after his release?

Walter McMillian stayed in Alabama after his release. Bryan and the staff at EJI filed civil rights lawsuits against state and local officials for putting him on death row before his trial and for violating his rights. The case settled out of court after several years of litigation. Because police, prosecutors, and judges are immune from judgments that require them to make payments to people victimized by abuse of authority and wrongdoing, the settlement compensation was much less than had been hoped. An effort to make the sheriff accountable went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, but the Court ruled that the sheriff could be protected from liability based on immunity laws. With the money that was obtained for Mr. McMillian, he was able to work in Monroe County selling scrap metal. About 10 years after his release, he began showing symptoms of early onset dementia, which some doctors believed was caused by the trauma of his ordeal on death row. Mr. McMillian died in 2013. He and Bryan remained close friends, occasionally traveling together to talk to audiences about the death penalty. They appeared at a United States Senate hearing shortly after Mr. McMillian's release to testify about the need for ending the death penalty and for reform of the criminal justice system. Read Mr. McMillian's statement.

How often are innocent people sentenced to death?

Since 1973, more than 165 people have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence was uncovered. A shocking rate of error has emerged: for every nine people executed in this country, one innocent person has been exonerated. Wrongful convictions have been found to result from erroneous eyewitness identifications, false and coerced confessions, misconduct by police and prosecutors, inadequate legal defense, false or misleading forensic evidence, and perjury by witnesses who are promised lenient treatment or other incentives in exchange for their testimony. Nine people have been exonerated in Alabama. Walter McMillian, Randall Padgett, Gary Drinkard, Louis Griffin, Wesley Quick, James Cochran, Charles Bufford, Anthony Ray Hinton, and Daniel Moore were found not guilty of the crimes that originally put them on Alabama's death row.

How does the Just Mercy book differ from the movie?

The book provides much more historical context for the issues raised in the movie and provides detail about our nation's evolving embrace of mass incarceration and excessive punishment. The book discusses many more clients and cases than the McMillian case depicted in the movie. The book focuses a lot on Bryan and EJI's work challenging the adult prosecution of children, some of whom were condemned to die in prison when they were 13 or 14 years of age. Bryan explores the evolution of mass incarceration and the impact on the poor, people of color, and people who are disfavored. The impact of over-incarceration on the mentally disabled and the growing numbers of people sentenced harshly because of mental illness is detailed. There are chapters that explore the increasing incarceration rates for women and how many women are criminalized for being poor. Bryan's own journey dealing with racial bias, police violence, and the enormous obstacles that must be overcome to do justice are more fully developed in the book, which recently was adapted for young adults.

How can I learn more about the issues raised in the movie?

In addition to reading the book, Just Mercy, you should visit EJI in Montgomery, Alabama. EJI has recently opened a major cultural complex to educate the public about our nation's history of racial injustice and the implications of that history for issues like mass incarceration and the death penalty. The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration opened in April 2018 along with the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is dedicated to thousands of African American victims of lynching. EJI's Peace and Justice Memorial Center provides daily presentations about EJI's work and the sites. Over 600,000 people have visited these sites. Visit eji.org to take a closer look at the work of EJI.

Do you have resources for discussing Just Mercy with students or community groups?

Yes, we have a Discussion Guide that provides background information and selected topics for discussing the Just Mercy movie with students, community groups, friends, and family. You can also download this discussion guide for students and groups who are reading the Just Mercy book.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson | Bestselling Book and Adapted Film

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
'Just Mercy' is a bestselling book telling the story of EJI and who we represent, that has been adapted into a feature film.

# data[].attributes.body
This HBO documentary follows Bryan Stevenson and EJI's struggle to create greater fairness in the criminal justice system.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This HBO documentary follows Bryan Stevenson and EJI's struggle to create greater fairness in the criminal justice system.

Buy the DVD or stream anytime

About the Film

True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality follows 30 years of EJI's work on behalf of the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. The film won the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications's 26th annual Vision Award and has been nominated for a Peabody Award.

Told primarily in his own words, True Justice shares Bryan Stevenson's experience with a criminal justice system that "treats you better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent." The burden of facing this system is explored in candid interviews with associates, close family members, and clients.

This feature documentary focuses on Bryan Stevenson's life and career-particularly his indictment of the U.S. criminal justice system for its role in codifying modern systemic racism-and tracks the intertwined histories of slavery, lynching, segregation and mass incarceration. Highlighting watershed moments involving cases and clients, True Justice offers a rare glimpse into the human struggle that is required when the poor and people of color are wrongly condemned or unfairly sentenced, and explores the personal toll it takes.

The film chronicles EJI's work in Alabama as well as the early influences that drove Bryan Stevenson to become an advocate for the poor and the incarcerated. As a young lawyer in the 1980s, he witnessed firsthand how courts unfairly applied the death penalty based on race and how the Supreme Court ultimately declared that racial bias in the administration of the death penalty was "inevitable."

Tracing the trajectory of the Court since the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which ruled that African Americans are not citizens, True Justice shows how the Court has long sanctioned inequality, oppression, and violence. Illuminating the power of memory in cultural change, the film instills hope for a brighter American future.

The film also documents the monumental opening of EJI's Legacy Museum and its National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is dedicated to the more than 4,400 African American victims of lynching. These sites are part of EJI's effort to engage the nation in a new era of truth and justice. As part of the campaign, EJI is working with communities to recognize lynching victims by collecting soil from lynching sites and erecting historical markers.

True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality reveals a history that can't be forgotten in the pursuit of genuine justice.

Behind the Camera

Six-time Emmy-winner Peter Kunhardt (HBO's Emmy-winning Jim: The James Foley Story) executive produces and directs; Emmy-winners Teddy Kunhardt and George Kunhardt produce and direct.

Kunhardt Films's HBO credits include the Emmy-winning Jim: The James Foley Story, the Emmy-winning Teddy: In His Own Words, the Emmy-nominated Nixon by Nixon: In His Own Words, the Emmy-nominated Gloria: In Her Own Words, The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee, Becoming Warren Buffett, King in the Wilderness and John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls.

True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality is a co-production of HBO and Kunhardt Films; produced and directed by Peter Kunhardt, George Kunhardt and Teddy Kunhardt; executive produced by Trey Ellis and Peter Kunhardt; edited and produced by Maya Mumma, ACE. For HBO: executive produced by Jacqueline Glover, Nancy Abraham and Lisa Heller.

Host a Screening

You can share the feature length version of True Justice by hosting a community screening. Please contact Emily Keating for licensing and permission information: [email protected] . Educator resources that accompany the film, including an Engagement Guide, can be found here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"True Justice" Documentary: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This HBO documentary follows Bryan Stevenson and EJI's struggle to create greater fairness in the criminal justice system. Buy the DVD or stream anytime True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality follows 30 years of EJI's work on behalf of the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Anthony Ray Hinton's "The Sun Does Shine" Is Oprah Book Club Pick

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"If there is ever a story that needs to be told, it is this one. Anthony Ray Hinton is extraordinary, an example to us all of the power of the human spirit to rise above complete injustice. He is using his experience as a way to turn the broken criminal justice system upside down.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This report documents the legacy of the domestic slave trade in America.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
EJI has now documented nearly 6,500 racial terror lynchings in America between 1865 and 1950. Thousands more Black people have been killed by white mob lynchings whose deaths may never be discovered.

In our 2015 report, Lynching in America, EJI documented 4,500 racial terror lynchings in the period between 1877 and 1950. Our newest report, Reconstruction in America, documents nearly 2,000 additional lynchings between 1865 and 1876, raising the total number of documented lynchings to nearly 6,500.

Thousands more were attacked, sexually assaulted, and terrorized by white mobs and individuals who were shielded from arrest and prosecution.

White perpetrators of lawless violence against formerly enslaved people were almost never held accountable-instead, they were often celebrated. Emboldened Confederate veterans and former enslavers organized a reign of terror that effectively nullified constitutional amendments designed to provide Black people with equal protection and the right to vote.

In a series of devastating opinions, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Congressional efforts to protect formerly enslaved people. The Court ceded control to the same white Southerners who used terror and violence to stop Black political participation, upholding laws and practices that codified racial hierarchy and embracing a new constitutional order defined by "states' rights."

Within a decade after the Civil War, Congress began to abandon the promise of assistance to millions of formerly enslaved Black people. Violence, mass lynchings, and lawlessness enabled white Southerners to create a regime of white supremacy and Black disenfranchisement alongside a new economic order that continued to exploit Black labor.

White officials in the North and West similarly rejected racial equality, codified racial discrimination, and occasionally embraced the same tactics of violent control seen in the South.

We cannot understand our present moment without recognizing the lasting damage caused by allowing white supremacy and racial hierarchy to prevail during Reconstruction.

Bryan Stevenson, Director

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EJI has now documented nearly 6,500 racial terror lynchings in America between 1865 and 1950. Thousands more Black people have been killed by white mob lynchings whose deaths may never be discovered. In our 2015 report, Lynching in America, EJI documented 4,500 racial terror lynchings in the period between 1877 and 1950.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Before we heal the wounds from our present, we must face our past.

# data[].attributes.body
Goodreads

# data[].attributes.body
Goodreads

# data[].attributes.body
Goodreads

# data[].attributes.body
Goodreads

# data[].attributes.body
"Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done."