Bryan Stevenson is an attorney, social justice activist, law professor, and founding executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. His work centers on challenging racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
His work with the EJI has expanded beyond capital punishment to include providing counseling for the poor, exposing sentencing bias, reducing excessive sentences, parole reform, addressing mass incarceration, and backing the reform and reentry of convicted juveniles. The EJI has helped release over 135 wrongly accused prisoners sentenced to death.
Stevenson and EJI have worked tirelessly to address the ramifications of slavery and structural racism in the United States.
Stevenson played a crucial role in memorializing America’s dark past. In 2018, he opened the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is the first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved Black people and victims of racial terror and honors the memory of more than 4,000 Black Americans who were lynched across twelve southern states from 1877 to 1950.
The Memorial is dubbed a “sacred space for truth-telling and reflection about racial terrorism and its legacy.” The names of every victim and locations of their lynchings are memorialized with 800 six-foot monuments hanging scaffold-like upon a hilltop overlooking downtown Montgomery.
He also created The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which provides a history of slavery and its lasting legacy in the United States through Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era and the modern era of mass incarceration.
Stevenson is a highly respected speaker and has received over forty honorary doctoral degrees from numerous institutions and more awards. His memoir was brought to life in the movie Just Mercy, featuring Michael B. Jordan as Stevenson, and Jamie Foxx as Walter McMillan.
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In celebration of Black History Month, the Training Division is honoring black legal minds in the United States who have advanced civil rights and continue to inspire advocates to dismantle systems of oppression and work for a better tomorrow.