![]() ![]() In April, EJI opened two sites in Montgomery. And since 2008, EJI has expanded its scope to education, exposing a narrative missing from America's textbooks: A recent nationwide study revealed that, among other things, 92 percent of middle school students did not know slavery was a central issue of the Civil War. Alabama (2012)-resulting in landmark decisions: the abolishing of mandatory life without parole for children. They've taken four cases to the Supreme Court, two of them- Jackson v. Since EJI's founding in 1989, Stevenson and his staff, against tremendous odds, have overturned 135 death sentence convictions in Alabama and assisted in another dozen nationwide. The stories are horrifying and infuriating, but delivered with an unshakeable sense of hope and a belief that evil can be overcome. Jordan), is an account of his decades of work as a lawyer representing poor clients wrongly convicted or excessively punished. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, his best-selling 2014 memoir (soon to be a film starring Michael B. Roughly 65 years later, Stevenson is still making that argument, becoming one of the most prominent faces of the modern civil rights movement. ![]() As Baldwin also wrote, no one in America escapes the effects of racism, "and everyone in America bears some responsibility for it." These aren't black problems they are the problems of a nation. In his 1955 book, Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin described America as having a "depthless alienation from oneself and one's people," and not "the faintest desire to look back." But the past, he went on, "is all that makes the present coherent, and further, the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly." Systemic bias, it turns out, is as American as apple pie. Board of Education of Topeka, which declared segregation of schools unconstitutional in 1954, have been almost entirely reversed) or that employment opportunities remain disproportionately stacked against people of color or the relentless harassment of African-Americans by the police or the prison population- the largest in the world-with its predominance of black and brown inmates. Consider the still segregated school districts, steering black children onto separate and unequal tracks (a 2016 report by the Government Accountability Office found the gains of Brown v. There is, however, a neo–Jim Crow America. ![]() Nonwhite citizens of America grow up with an understanding: Even as racial discrimination has lessened, it remains embedded in our government, legal system and law enforcement. I don't expect that will change in my lifetime." I lived it." Has racism in Montgomery improved since his childhood? "A little," he says evenly, "but it will always be here. I ask if he's been to EJI's three-month-old National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which remembers the thousands of lynched African-Americans. I explain that I'll be interviewing Bryan Stevenson, the lawyer, activist and director of the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative. He tells me that he grew up and raised his children in Montgomery, that he loves it here, particularly the slow pace and the barbecue. I get to chatting with the driver, an African-American who looks to be in his 60s. My taxi passes meticulously preserved 19th-century homes, immaculate green lawns, stately, flowering trees. But on this evening in July, under a still bright-blue sky, the place is eerily quiet. Black and white photos of the civil rights movement had informed my vision of Montgomery: images of King entering the city at the head of a black voters' rights march in 1965 police dogs straining their leashes as African-American protesters emerge from a fog of tear gas white people, their faces contorted with hate, yelling at women carrying signs demanding the integration of public schools. ![]()
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