Bryan Stevenson on Challenging the Legacy of Racial Inequality in America: the Work of the Equal Justice Initiative

In this episode David Blight speaks with Bryan Stevenson, the founding director of the Equal Justice Initiative and the author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Mr. Stevenson was here at Yale University to give the annual Parks-King Lecture at the Yale Divinity School.

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.  Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned.   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 successfully argued several cases in the United States Supreme Court and recently won an historic ruling that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger are unconstitutional.  Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief or release for over 115 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row.  Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge the legacy of racial inequality in America, including major projects to educate communities about slavery, lynching and racial segregation.  Mr. Stevenson is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. Read more about Bryan here.

You can email comments and suggestions to gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu with subject line “podcast.”

“Slavery and Its Legacies” is available on iTunes University and SoundCloud.