Bryan Stevenson says facing our racist past is a path, not punishment

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In a second term, President Trump has been trying to erase parts of American history

that he considers corrosive ideology or disparaging to other Americans alive or dead. He ordered the Secretary of the Interior to take down sculptures, markers, and displays and federally funded places like the National Parks. So, down came references to slavery, Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, and other forms of racism, brutality, and inequity. At the same time, my guest Brian Stephenson has been doing the opposite.

He was opening an exhibition on the history of the civil rights movement, and the violence and degradation faced by black people that led to the movement. The exhibit begins in 1955, with the boycott of Montgomery's segregated buses, and ends ten years later, with the marches from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights. The third of those marches, the one that was successfully completed, arrived at its destination

Montgomery Square, 61 years ago today. Montgomery Square is both a location and the name of the New Exhibit. It's part of the legacy sites, which includes sites and public places in Montgomery, about slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow, as well as the legacy museum. The larger intent is truth and reconciliation by facing the past.

The project was founded and is led by Stephenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit legal organization founded with the mission of representing children and adults, unfairly convicted, unfairly sentenced, subjected to brutality and prison, or facing execution. He's argued six cases before the Supreme Court.

You may know him through the movie adaptation of his memoir, Just Mercy, in which he was portrayed by Michael B. Jordan, who just won an Oscar earlier this month for his role in sinners. The Equal Justice Initiative also has a new book called Legacy Sites, a history of racial injustice. Brian Stephenson, welcome back to fresh air.

My pleasure. What was your reaction when President Trump decided to selectively ban history from public places and then some school boards started banning books by Black authors, also by LGBTQ

“authors, and banning some African-American history classes?”

Well, I think it really marked the beginning of a truly tragic era in our history.

For so much of our history, we've never really been honest about the legacy of slavery

and the consequences of racial bias and racial bigotry. We've only recently made a commitment to start being more comprehensive, being more thorough in the telling of our history, and so short into this process to have the administration come along and say, "No, we don't want that anymore." I think it's really tragic, and I regard it as a move that will make us less healthy,

less capable of developing the kind of democracy that most of us want, and really problematic. I mean, we don't tell doctors that you can't tell people if they have high blood pressure or diabetes or cancer, because if we do that, then people won't know they have a disease and they won't get the treatment that they need. I regard this similarly.

We have a long history of racial bigotry, racial injustice, that we've only started to try to confront. Trump said that the statues he's trying to remove, the plaques he's trying to remove, that it's because these things disparage Americans or promote corrosive ideology, and I wonder what you make of that?

“I think it actually gives us an opportunity to see the strength of our country to overcome”

these unbelievable challenges.

We enslaved black people for 246 years, 10 million black people in Dord constant sorrow

and immense suffering, and despite that horrific treatment, at the end of the Civil War, most chose America. They didn't choose retribution and revenge against the people who enslaved them. They chose to build schools. They chose to build churches and families.

Black people ran for office. We had black people going to Congress. It was a glorious moment, and then it collapsed, because our fear and our anger and our court prioritized states rights over constitutional rights, and then all of these terrible

mob violence, lynching, segregation, codified racial hierarchy, and we didn't learn from that

moment in the way that we could have learned the reason why we educate people about this. We want people to understand this, is because we believe that if you actually understand the history of failure, the history of mistakes, you can do things to prevent that.

“And I think this mindset that we don't need to talk about the things about our history”

that are problematic, that are dangerous, is a very dangerous mindset. If we ever want to be free from the burden of racial bigotry and violence, I don't talk about slavery and lynching and segregation, because I want to punish America. I talk about these things, because I want to liberate this.

I genuinely think there's something better waiting for.

There is an America that is more free, where there's more quality, where there's more justice, where there's less bigotry, and I think it's waiting for us, but I don't think we can reach that America. We can't create that America, while we remain burdened by this history, that too many refuse to talk about too many refuse to acknowledge.

You live in Montgomery, Alabama, and then that is where the Equal Justice Initiative, which you created, and the legacy sides which you created, are based as well. Montgomery was central to the civil rights movement, from the bus boycott of 1955 to 1965, and the marches, or the attempted marches, from Selma to Montgomery.

The second march was disrupted by state troopers who beat the marches, including John Lewis,

and the third march finally made it through to Montgomery. My impression is that Montgomery was so central to the civil rights movement, because things were so bad for black people there. Can you talk about what made Montgomery stand out?

“Yeah, I think it actually begins with the history of slavery.”

Most people in this country don't appreciate that many of the states, where 90% of the by population lived at the end of the civil war, were relatively new. Alabama didn't become a state until 1820. The Congress banned the transatlantic trade, the importation of Africans to this country enslaved in 1808, so for most of the 19th century, the domestic trade of enslaved people

shaped the lives of African Americans, and Alabama's population of enslaved people went from 40,000 in 1820 to 400,000 in 1860, and most of those people lived in Montgomery, and the county surrounding Montgomery, which were known as part of the black belt, this range of counties from coastal Virginia through the Carolinas, who south central Georgia and Alabama up into the Mississippi Delta and Arkansas Delta.

And because of that, white settlers brought thousands of enslaved people to labor, the development of the cotton gin made cotton, this very, very prosperous product, and it created wealth for so many people. After the Civil War, then we had a very large population, Montgomery County was two-thirds black, and that terrified many of those former enslaveders, those people who regained power

after the collapse of reconstruction, and so they created a whole system for subordinating black people, terrorizing black people. Our constitution created in 1901, expressly, is designed by their own words to maintain white supremacy, and so laws were passed, segregation statutes were passed. We denied black people access to public spaces, we made black people use separate toilets,

different water fountains, and that day-to-day humiliation absolutely impacted people in Montgomery, like it did many other parts of the south. The one place where you couldn't create separation, though, was our city buses, which were primarily used by black women to get to work. So leading into the 1940s, you had a population of black people who had endured enslavement,

who had endured lynching, who had endured decades of humiliation and segregation, which made this community ready for something new, something different. As part of the legacy project, there's a long research paper that was done, that covers new things about the civil rights movement in Montgomery, and also reiterates some of the history.

“I learned something like really basic, I think I should have known about what the buses”

were like in Montgomery, which is that if you were black, you had to board the bus in front and buy your ticket, and then leave the bus and actually board and back where black people were allowed to sit, and what sometimes happened is that then, as you were exiting the front,

So you've paid your money, you've faced the humiliation of having to leave, and then the bus leaves without you.

“It was one of many things that just made writing the buses so perilous.”

You're exactly right, black people had to pay in the front, get off the bus, go to the rear, and then enter there, and some bus drivers would just take off. They wouldn't wait until you got clearly into the bus, and so people got injured. And then there was just the way the buses and segregation work.

The first ten seats were reserved for white people, and even when there were no white

people on the bus, and the bus was filled with black people, you had black people who had to stand after working 12 hours, next to empty seats, because those seats were reserved for white people, and this whole system just created lots of conflict, lots of opportunities to be degraded, lots of opportunities to be harmed, held your brooks, paid his dime at the front of the bus, and then was told, oh, the bus is too full, and he said, well,

give me my dime back, and the bus driver refused, and when he kept arguing, he called the police, a police officer was summoned, and that police officer shot this unarmed black World War II veteran to death on the bus, two other black member killed similarly.

And so these buses were places of real peril, but black people couldn't avoid them

because they had to get to work, they had to get to the homes where they served as maids and cooks and domestic workers. And it did make the bus this very unique space for how racial apartheid, how segregation and Jim Crow manifested in the lives of virtually every black person in the community. Now, you mentioned this gentleman who called the police, and the police officer shot him.

“The bus drivers were given certain policing powers, what were those powers?”

The bus drivers were told effectively that they had the same authority as law enforcement, so they could direct people to get on or off the bus. What would prompt many of the arrest

would be when black women were shouted at by the bus driver, usually with some dehumanizing

name, "Hey girl, get up and give your seat to that white man." And sometimes it was just the public assault that would push people to resist, and there were black women who started resisting in the 1940s, and then they would get arrested, sometimes they'd be beaten, sometimes they would be assaulted, but the role of the bus driver to facilitate the kind of bigotry and the kind of violence that took place on these buses

cannot be overstated. They were active participants in the subordination and domination of so many black women and writers in Montgomery. One of the people who faced what we were talking about a couple of minutes ago about boarding the bus in front so you could pay then having to leave and board it through the back. That's something that Rosa Parks faced, and she's famous for saying "or so this story

goes," that she wasn't going to go to the back of the bus because her feet were tired. Tell us about this incident where she had to leave the bus and board through the back and things did not work out. The regular bus writers got to know which drivers were more challenging and more likely to create issues, and so the driver of the bus on the day she was arrested in December

1955, James Blake was the same driver she encountered, years earlier, who mistreated her and forced her to get off the bus, and she tried really hard to stay off of his bus, and that was true for many, many black women, and complaints were being made, the women's political caucus was organizing and presenting petitions to the city about changing the conduct of these drivers.

“It's really important for people to understand, this was not about momentary fatigue.”

Black women had been refusing to give up their seats for a decade, the women's political council had been petitioning to change these practices, what Mrs. Parks would tell me and tell many others that that day she was just grieving the death of Emmett Till, it was the murder of Emmett Till and Mrs. Sippy and hearing from people in Mrs. Sippy about all of the hardships it was seeing those men get acquitted despite their brutal murder of Emmett

Till that just caused her to say I'm not going to cooperate with this anymore, and she was the fifth woman in just those seven months to do it, Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat in March of 1955, a real Browder Mary Louise Smith, Sophia McDonald refused to give up their seats between March and December, and the pressure was building and on December one, Ms. Parks said I'm not going to move, and that was the trigger.

I think what made her the person the whole community was prepared to organize around

“was yes, her leadership in the community. She had been the secretary of the NAACP for”

many years. She had been courageous when Recy Taylor was abducted by seven men and brutally raped. Mrs. Parks led the investigation documented what happened to her, made the community aware of this sexual violence that this woman had experienced. Mrs. Parks taught classes to young people on how to confront racial bias, Claudette Colvin was one of the young people who had studied with Mrs. Parks, but she also had this way about her that I got to experience

when I moved here where she just inspired dignity. She inspired the sense of self-worth. She had an integrity, and everybody in the community recognized that, but it was her leadership and her willingness to stand up for black women and stand up for black people. She was a very active activist when Jeremiah Reeves, a young 17 year old black kid, was arrested and falsely charged with rape, forced to confess by being strapped in an electric chair by

the police, and so they made him say these things. And she led the charge trying to stop his execution. So she was very well known in the community as an activist, someone who cared deeply about the lives and the experiences of every black person here. How did she feel about her years as an activist and mobilizing the community and kind of igniting the bus boycott with her refusal to move to the back of the bus? How did she feel about that getting reduced

to my feet or tired? I think she was really proud of what she did. I think she was aware that people wanted a narrative that made the oppression less violent, that made the

“bigotry less devastating. More palatable? More palatable. Yeah, and that's why I think”

she was so committed to continuing the struggle. She didn't stop being an activist after the bus boycott. She was here in 1965 when the march from Selma to Montgomery took place. She worked for John Cognars in Michigan for years. She continued to be an advocate. She stood with Malcolm X. She stood with many leaders who were trying to make a difference. And I think what frustrated her is what frustrates a lot of us is that we have done such a poor job

of educating people about the history of this community. Black women were being raped by police officers. The rape of Geraldine Perkins really aggravated people in this community. There was a black woman who refused to give a perceived name by all a white in 1940s. And when she challenged her conviction for violating segregation laws, police officers went

“to her home, abducted her 16-year-old daughter and sexually assaulted her rape her. And”

she refused to give into that. She demanded that the police identify these officers. There

was never any accountability. They were never held a response. Well, they allowed the officer

to leave the town. The officers that raped, Geraldine Perkins were not indicted. And so the frustration growing with this kind of violence, this kind of abuse, the murder of Hillyard Books, the murder of these other black veterans, was very much the motivation to challenge this tens of thousands of people joined the White Citizens Council in response to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They began harassing people. Black churches were bombed.

Dr. King's home was bombed. There was a get-tuff policy. Dr. King was arrested for driving 30 miles an hour in a 25-mile-an-hour zone. Black people were harassed on a daily basis. And that's an unclear story about the city and this movement. Then people want to confront. But it is the truth. And we need to understand it. If we think we can get past this big retreat in any meaningful way. Did you get to work with Rosa Parks? I did. When I moved

to Montgomery in the late '80s, it was an amazing woman named Johnny Carr, who was the president

of the Montgomery Improvement Association. And the Montgomery Improvement Association was the organization that was formed in 1955 to sustain the boycott. It continued for decades later. And when Ms. Carr heard that I had moved to Montgomery and I was a lawyer. She called me up and she said, "Oh, Brian, understand, you're a lawyer. Just moved to town." I said, "Yes, I am." She said, "Well, if you're a lawyer, I'm going to call you up and I'm going

to ask you to go some places and speak." And then she said, "I'm going to call you up and ask you to go some places and listen." And she said, "When I call you up, you're going to say, "Yes, ma'am." And so I said, "Yes, ma'am." And this car would send me places to speak and send me places to listen. And then one day, she called me and she said, "Brying Rosa Parks is coming to town. You want to come and spend time with us?" I said, "I do." And I went to the

Dr. King. And I set on the porch for two hours for the first time with Ms. Parks. And

“what was remarkable is that these three older women all talked about the things they were”

going to do. None of them talked about the things they had done, the things they had achieved. They just had this desire to do more. And after a couple of hours Ms. Parks turned to me and she said, "Okay, Brian, tell me what you're trying to do." And I told her about our work, trying to represent people on death row. I said, "We're trying to challenge wrongful convictions. We're trying to challenge this legal system that treats you better if you're rich in guilty

than if you're poor and innocent. We're trying to represent children. We're trying to do something about bigotry and poverty." And people who are mentally ill were trying to change the way we operate these jails in prisons. I gave her my whole rap and when I finished, she looked at me and she said, "That's gonna make you tire tire tire." And that's when Ms. Carlyne forward and she put

“her finger in my face. She said, "That's why you've got to be brave, brave, brave." And Ms. Parks grabbed”

my hand and said, "Will you be brave?" And I said, "Yes, ma'am." And I learned a lot from her. We were in Tallahassee. She was getting an honorary degree at Florida State University. It was a whole auditorium filled with people. And I was just kind of escorting her into the space and they didn't have me sitting next to her. I sat behind her. And when the band began to play, we shall overcome at the beginning. Nobody moved. And Ms. Parks turned to me and she just went and

she gave me a nod and I knew I was supposed to do something. And she stood up because she felt like people should stand up if they're going to honor this movement that's so fundamentally changed America. And when she stood I stood and then the whole auditorium stood. And when we left later,

she said, "Okay, you did good, you did good." She was an amazing human being and she was a fighter.

She had the heart of warrior and the grace of the extraordinary woman she was. So you were told at that time that you had to be brave. You're going to do the work that you were doing in Montgomery, Alabama. Weather times you really had to summon up courage

“to do what you were doing. Oh, absolutely. I think the gift that I've been given is that I get”

to walk on streets. I get to stand on the shoulders of people who did so much more with so much less. And it really does change how I think about what I can do. The people who came before me would put on their Sunday best. They would go places to push for the right to vote. They would go places to push for the right to be treated equally. They'd be on their knees praying and they'd get beaten and bloody and battered. And they would go home, wipe the blood off, change their clothes,

and they would go back and do it again. I've never been beaten and bloody and battered for my

advocacy. I've been threatened. I've been overwhelmed. I've had to stand next to people who are about to be executed. I've been called all kinds of horrific things. Yes, I've gotten the bomb threats and the death threats. But because of the people who've come before me, it has made me realize that I do not have the option to be anything other than brave. I was given so much hope by the people in this community. I mean, people don't appreciate that when 50,000 black people in

this city. Every African-American committed to staying off the buses for 382 days. They didn't know that they were going to win. They didn't know that the segregation would end. They just had this commitment and this hope. They had to believe something they haven't seen. And I tell my staff and I try to tell myself, that is the way we have to move through the world. If we want justice in this country, we have to be prepared. The belief things we haven't seen. We have to be prepared to stand

up when people say sit down. We have to be prepared to capture the spirit of those who've come before us. If we're going to do the things it must be done. There's lots more to talk about, but we need to take a short break first. So let me reintroduce you. My guest as human rights lawyer Brian Stephenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He also founded and leads the legacy sites and museum and series of sites and public places in Montgomery, Alabama dedicated to educate

and reflect on the harsh truths of American history. We'll be right back. This is fresh air. This is fresh air. Let's get back to my interview with human rights lawyer Brian Stephenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which represents children and adults unfairly convicted or sentenced. He also founded and leads the legacy project and museum and series of sites in public places among Montgomery, Alabama dedicated to educate and reflect

on the harsh truths of American history from slavery to reconstruction, Jim Crow and lynchings. The new site is about the civil rights movement. I want to get back to the Alabama Constitution.

equal isn't right, because it's not equal and it shouldn't be separated. So that's what mandated desegregation of schools. But for reasons I don't understand, in the Alabama State Constitution, there were several attempts to amend the Constitution that mandated segregated schools. That didn't even happen until the 2000s that there were attempts to overturn it, and it finally passed in 2022. How did it remain in the Constitution, the State Constitution, after the Supreme

“Court outlawed it? I think it helps for people to understand that there is a narrative struggle”

that is fueling the legal work. And I think that gives you insight. See, I think the great evil of slavery in America was the narrative that was created to justify enslavement. People who enslaved other people didn't want to think of themselves as immoral, or in decent, or on Christian. And so how do you feel decent and moral when you're pulling away a mother

from her screaming children knowing that that mother will never see those children again,

because you're treating her as property, well, you need a narrative. And we created this false narrative that black people aren't as good as white people, are less capable, less worthy, less decent. And that narrative survived the civil war, and it's what defeated our Constitution and in the same way that we're talking about brown. This happened a century earlier, Congress passed the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing equal protection to formerly enslaved people. They passed the 15th Amendment,

guaranteeing voting rights for black men. We had a short period of time where black people were voting and getting elected. And then our Supreme Court retreated from prioritizing the Constitution and said, "No, we're going to prioritize states' rights and let these states that formerly enslaved

“people create constitutions that will be priorities over our federal constitution." That's how that”

1901 Constitution was created. And it took decades before the Supreme Court found the courage to say, "No, in this country, the U.S. Constitution has to prevail." Those federal commitment, that idea of equal protection has to prevail. Well, people in the American South thought they could create new constitutional restrictions. They thought they could create new laws and maintain this racial hierarchy. And that's how that provision in the state constitution that prohibited

black and white kids from going to school together was created. That's why all of those laws were passed. And so the question is, "Why are we still dealing with how that this continued to the 21st

century?" Well, I think that's because we never required these states. We never required these decision-makers

to actually acknowledge the wrongfulness of segregation, the wrongfulness of that narrative

“of a racial difference. So, once it was put into state law, nobody wanted to take it out. That was”

seen as risky. And when they tried in 2004 to take that language out of the state constitution in a referendum, the majority of people in the state of Alabama voted to keep the language in. When they tried in 2012, and even bigger majority voted to keep it in. It came out in 2022, really because businesses were worried that we can't recruit automotive manufacturers from Europe. We can't recruit these international companies to this state. When we have that language in the

state constitution, it was the economic interest that finally got them to word it in a way that it was taken out. But that's the reason why I see us today in this country in the midst of a continuing narrative struggle. How did it make you feel? Because you were already living in Montgomery. You're not from there, but you were already living there for decades. So, how did it make you feel when you knew that the majority of voters in Alabama voted to keep mandated school segregation

in the state constitution? It just made it clear to me. We've made it too easy for people to be comfortable with racial bigotry in racial injustice. In a Fred Gray, the amazing lawyer who represented Dr. King and Rosa Parks who still live, he's 95, he's an extraordinary human being. I sometimes spend time with him and I've started joking with him. I say, Mr. Gray,

we got to get back to 1965. We got to find a time machine and go back to 1965. And he's always

so generous. He said, "Okay, what we're going to do when we get back to 1965." And in my mind, I want to reshape how we talk about what's needed. Because, you know, in many ways, we pass the voting rights act in 1965. But we didn't even require the states that had disenfranchised black people for a century to say, "We're sorry. We didn't require them to say, "Okay, we won't do that anymore.

going to police you." And that's got to be the thing that disenfranchised your misconduct.

“And I think that was a mistake, not a mistake made by anybody then. But it allowed people to be”

comfortable with the wrongfulness of their conduct. The people when enslaved other people never

were held accountable for this slavery. The people who lynched people for decades in this country would take their children and watch black people be pulled out of their homes or beaten and drowned in torch, were never held accountable for that mob violence. The people who created this world where black people were excluded and disfavored and humiliated on daily basis never had to do anything to account for all of that harm. And that may people feel like you can get away. You can be comfortable

with bigotry. And in fact, not only did we not make them feel accountable for it, we allowed them to romanticize it, to make it noble, to make it glorious, which is why in 1965 we started building schools in Montgomery named after Jefferson Davis, named after Robert E. Lee, named after Confederate leaders, was in the 50s that we began creating some of these laws in Alabama. Jefferson Davis's birthday is still a state holiday. Confederate Memorial Day is still a state holiday.

It was an expression of resistance to this idea that we have to get past white supremacy. You have to get past racial hierarchy. When they created Martin Luther King's birthday, the compromise was, it wasn't going to be Martin Luther King Day. It's going to be Martin Luther King/Roberty Lee Day. And that mindset is what has fueled this. And so for me, the vote against the provision to take this out was just a manifestation of the unfinished business of the Civil Rights

Movement, the unfinished work of challenging this narrative that is made it so acceptable to look the other way when racial violence and racial bigotry and racial injustice continues to constrain the lives of so many people in this country. One of your larger goals is to arrive at a process of truth and reconciliation, not just truth, but truth and reconciliation. What would that look like to you? Well, I think the first thing is that for truth and justice, truth and reconciliation,

truth and restoration, truth and repair, I think the first thing we have to acknowledge is that those things are sequential. You can't get the beautiful rewards like redemption and reconciliation and restoration and repair unless you first tell the truth. As a lawyer, I can tell you that you've got to have the truth of what happened at the crime scene and the state understands

“it's they want to put all of the evidence in because that's what's going to allow the jury to”

make an informed decision about culpability. And we've never really done that. And so I think this

process of truth telling has to shape what we do in South Africa after the collapse of apartheid, they committed space for the victims of apartheid to give voice to their harm. They even created space for the perpetrators to give voice to their regret. You go to Germany, the villain of the 20th century, and you can't go 200 meters without seeing markers in monuments of memorials dedicated to the harm of the Holocaust. They've made truth telling a necessity, no student in Germany can graduate,

without demonstrating a detailed knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust. They require it. And the result of that is that there are no adult Hitler statues in Berlin. There are no monuments

memorials to the Nazis. We've never done that in this country. In fact, we've done the opposite.

And so the truth telling becomes the first part of it. And when you tell the truth about the harm, then you think differently about the remedy, about what we should do. I think it's we really committed to truth telling about all of the harms of disenfranchisement. We might have said to these states that disenfranchise people 400 years. You know what you all should automatically register black people when they become of age. Just as a way of repairing this harm, of acknowledging

“this harm, maybe you should go into the black community in the 1960s and get their votes,”

because you made going to polling places so treacherous and so terrifying. And if we had done that, maybe 50 years later, because we don't need to do that anymore, because we've gotten to a different place in America. But we did the opposite. We actually allowed prosecutors to begin prosecuting and persecuting black people for voter fraud. And that mindset has continued, which is why today, you still see all of these maneuvers being undertaken, which ultimately

undermine full political participation for black and brown people in this country. So you were talking about voting and the voting rights act. The march from Selma to Montgomery that was finally successfully completed with that people being beaten by the police. Those marches led to the voting rights act. Was voting especially difficult in Montgomery

Well, throughout the south, you had this intense commitment to minimize black political participation. And it was certainly intense in South Central Alabama. Dallas County where Selma is only 2% of eligible black people were registered to vote. And that wasn't because they hadn't tried. They'd been trying for decades and they would be turned away. They would limit the hours when black people could come in. States across the south created these poll tests. One of the exhibits in our

museum is we took all the questions from some of these various poll tests and we put it in the exhibit and people can come in there and try to answer the questions. And the questions are things like how many bubbles in a bar of soap, how many windows at the White House. We have a jar of jelly beans, how many jelly beans in the jelly bean jar and people get the absurdity of that. And only black people had to answer these questions. And so very few black people had been registered to vote

and participated and allowed to vote throughout the south. But it was very, very intense in South Central Alabama. So what are voting restrictions in Alabama like now? When you go to vote,

I assume you were registered to vote. When you go to vote or when you first registered, did you

“face any obstacles or did they see you and just said, well, we're not messing with him?”

No, I think when the voting rights act was being aggressively enforced by the Justice Department, you could call the Department of Justice if they started doing anything that was a disincentive for black people to vote. When they had different polling hours in black presence than White Presence when they didn't have enough workers and the wait time was longer. The Justice Department under the voting rights act was empowered to come in and fix that to do something about that. And so

for a very substantial period of time to at the end of the 20th century and the first part of this

century, black people have had a much easier time voting that has started to change in the last 15 years when the Supreme Court and Shelby County restricted the Department of Justice ability to enforce some of these provisions in that 2013 case states did start closing polling places in

“majority black counties. They created new laws where you have to show identification. You have to do”

things that you didn't have to do to vote. And of course now we're seeing this effort to manipulate political districts which happened immediately after the voting rights act. So jurisdictions were created that congregated the black vote into one district when in fact you could have had two or three districts where black people would have a chance of electing someone. So all of that jerry mandering and all of these things have been an effort to undermine black political participation

but it is absolutely getting worse and will get worse if the court continues to restrict the Department's ability to enforce and then of course you have to have a justice department that is motivated to protect voting rights for everybody for this to work. The latest site in the legacy sites that you created is about the civil rights movement and that includes the march from Selma to Montgomery which culminated not long after in the voting rights act. What did you learn about

any of the attempted marches or the finally successful march from Selma to Montgomery that you

“didn't know before that added something really important for you to the larger story?”

I think what I learned was just how much more courageous people were than I think has been previously acknowledged. People like Linda Blackman, Larry people like Joanne Blan started getting arrested when they were eight and nine years old because they wanted their parent and grandparents to be able to vote. They knew they couldn't vote. They were too young and we've got photographs at our site of children holding up signs saying let our parents vote and these children would be rounded up

and taken to jails where they'd be abandoned for two or three days and I just realized how courageous people were. We've been doing this project where we interview people and some of the people who were beaten and battered Amelia Bointen Robinson was just almost killed by horses and police officers. Linda Blackman, Larry said she got hit and she passed out and for 40 years she

documentary footage she realized that she passed out and she was in that condition because after

“she fell she was beaten by state troopers over and over again on the head but she insisted”

on getting out of the hospital and being ready for the next march. I think it's the courage,

it's the commitment, it's the tenacity, the acculturation to do things that most people would never

choose to do. We recently lost Dr Bernard Lafayette, extraordinary leader who was tasked with organizing much of what happened in Selma and he told me he said Brian we were prepared to die and he says that I think really, really honestly he said we were prepared to die and I don't think people appreciate the extraordinary courage it took to confront that kind of threat with no protection without an army, with no weapons. I think that's the discovery that I'm really inspired by.

As we record this you're preparing his eulogy you will have already given it I think about the

“time we broadcast it so you must have known him pretty well. I was really honored to be”

one of the many people he inspired we brought him to Montgomery we brought him to E. J. I he would

talk to our staff but that's the again the beauty why I feel like I can't complain I can't say oh I'm too tired I can't do this is because I have been in relationship and fellowship with these extraordinary people. We also just lost Dr John Perkins and Jackson Mississippi unbelievable human being who just grew up with such poverty his mother died of malnutrition when he was born in 1930. His brother was killed by the police after he had fought in World War II when Dr Perkins

tried to help civil rights workers and tried to desegregate Mississippi he was taken by the police

beaten so badly they they shoved a fork up his nose and to his throat they beat him so badly

he had a heart attack and almost died but when he recovered he did not wait where he went to the very church is where those police officers would go and he confronted them and said what you did was ungodly and he started this ministry that brought people together for decades I think when you have a relationship to people like that you just realize that you can do more than you think

“you can do that you have to capture their spirit and doing the Montgomery bus boycott and this”

new site you know you read the speeches of Dr King who talks so much about the beloved community and even though I'm getting older I've started reflecting on that because in my head the beloved community has these tabernacles these spaces where there are long tables and their seats at the table and I know that John Lewis and I know that Claudette Colvin and I know that a Dr Lafayette and Dr Perkins and Joanne Blan have a seat at that table and I started thinking about how I

got to earn my seat at the table you don't get a seat because of wealth or power or talent or ability you get a seat by serving other people by standing up for the poor and the disfavored by pushing for justice and I think that spirit animated the Selma to Montgomery March and I want that spirit to animate the work that I do I want that spirit to animate those of us who right now believe we're going to have to fight harder for racial justice in

a time of censorship and denial. My guest is human rights lawyer Brian Stevenson founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative he also founded and leads the legacy sites and museum and series of sites and public places in Montgomery, Alabama dedicated to educate and reflect on the harsh truths of American history will be right back this is fresh air this is fresh air let's get back to my interview with human rights lawyer Brian Stevenson founder and executive director

of the Equal Justice Initiative he also founded and leads the legacy project and museum and series of sites and public places among Montgomery, Alabama dedicated to educate and reflect on the harsh truths of American history from slavery to reconstruction, Jim Crow and lynchings the new site is about the civil rights movement before we continue the interview a heads up will be talking about lynching in this section the discussion will include some relatively graphic details

if I have my number right the legacy sites research was able to document for its lynching site 800 more lynchings than had been previously documented how did you find those other 800 what sources

American south there had been research done by Monroe work African American sociologist at Tuskegee there were some other sociologists that had tried to add to that work but the detailed work of going into these communities and uncovering archive references and newspaper references was something that no one had undertaken and so we spent five years combing through these records and since the time of that report the number of new lynchings that we've we've documented has actually grown

to over 2000 we now have identified 6,500 lynchings of black people in this country between 1865 and 1950 and I do think it says something again about how we have failed to investigate this really

“important period of American history most people in this country can't name a single black person”

it was lynched between 1877 and 1950 most people don't know that 6 million black people fled the American south during the first half of the 20th century they don't even appreciate that the demographic geography of our country was largely shaped by terror violence because the black people in Chicago and Cleveland or Troy Los Angeles went to these communities not as immigrants seeking economic opportunities but they went to these communities as refugees from terror and

violence and so we think this research is key to understanding America in the 20th century understanding our tolerance of mob violence understanding our comfort with torture and violence

and so we thought it was absolutely critical to do this work in the most comprehensive way possible

I'm wondering if you we contextualize some of the sources who told the researchers about lynchings that had previously not been documented on a national scale and by that I mean like we're there lynchings reported in newspapers that put it in an narrative that was positive like so and so who you know rape so and so was lynched and now justice has been done absolutely absolutely I mean first of all a source that we used that hadn't been explored where the

whole network of black newspapers that existed in the first half of the 20th century and that's where you could get information that you wouldn't get in other publications but there's no question that the mainstream newspapers frequently celebrated these lynchings the lynching of John Hartfield in Mississippi was scheduled and the newspaper said Hartfield to be lynched tomorrow evening at six o'clock and thousands of people showed up for that lynching and we have that headline on our

“wall and yes I think media and journalism was complicit in a lot of this when we open our site”

the editor of the Montgomery appetizer was very critical because he saw you're going to talk to

the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and you're going to do interviews but you never talked to us and I said well that's because I have some concerns about whether I can trust you and I said the Montgomery appetizer celebrated lynchings you were complicit you advertised them and you've never acknowledged it and to his credit they went and looked through their files a documented all of the things that they did and on the day we opened our national memorial

their headline said we're sorry we were wrong this paper was an active participant in creating an environment that fed racial terror and for the next week they did all of these reports exposing the ways in which their coverage had failed and I was so excited by it I was so energized by it and of course they then became a partner that we could work with in presenting information and

“content and I think that's what we deny ourselves when we resist the truth when we don't”

own up to the mistakes that we've made you know in the example that I gave when I said a newspaper might have put lynchings in a positive light I mean there's two problems with that one is that

the person was probably never tried who was lynched and might have been totally innocent of what

he was charged with and two no matter what that person did lynching is not the way it's supposed to be done in the United States with a justice system yeah it's illegal it is unconscious it is you cannot reconcile that with the democracy these miles would go to jails and pull people out and burn them alive torture them cut off their body parts and the other thing that is not well understood and we emphasize is that our national memorial people were lynched not for accusations

a man was lynched because he didn't call a police officer sir somebody didn't step off the

“sidewalk when white people walked by a black man went to the front door of a white person's house”

not the back door so many people were lynched because they passed a note they were black men passing notes to white women Mary Turner was lynched in Georgia because she complained about the fact that her husband had been lynched one black woman in Kentucky was lynched because they couldn't find her brother so they used her as a proxy for this black manhood been accused of something and when you understand that this practice this terror violence was about tormenting and traumatizing

and reinforcing this racial hierarchy you begin to think of this differently wasn't punishment they could have just buried the bodies of lynching victims to try to hide it to try to get more people lynched to minimize it but they didn't want to do that that wasn't the purpose of it they left people hanging on telephone wires on trees sometimes they wouldn't even let the family come and cut the person down why because they wanted to terror and traumatize and torment

everybody in the black community so it wasn't just 6,500 people who were lynched who were the victims it was millions of black people who had to deal with this terror this trauma this torture they would sometimes drag bodies through the black community after they had been lynched they make black people come out to witness the spectacle of this horror and when you understand that you begin to see this as a fundamental problem in the American experience in the American psyche

“this isn't just a problem for black people this is a problem for everybody and that's what”

we're hoping people will begin to think about as they think about how we now navigate in era we're beginning to see mobs act in violent ways we're beginning to see rhetoric that tries to minimize the harms of history you're a human rights lawyer and we've done a lot of work you've argued before the Supreme Court six times but now like per the past few years you've been also focusing on history you haven't turned your back on law you're still a human rights lawyer

and you still lead the equal justice initiative which you found it but what made you initially think that it was time to turn to history that law the legal system wasn't enough well I went into law because the law was able to do things for people that our politics are

other democratic institutions couldn't and I learned that first hand you know as in a county

that was 80% white 20% black if you had a vote in our county about weather black hits like me could go to the public schools we would have lost the vote it took lawyers coming in there to enforce brown versus board of education in the 60s that made it possible for me to even get to law school so through out most of my career I've wanted to use the rule of law to create rights for people who were poor and disfavored and vulnerable the work we've done to ban the death penalty

for children to ban the death penalty for people who are intellectually disabled the work we've done to restrict extreme and cruel punishment is by creating rights and I still believe in that but what caused me to pause was really about 14 or 15 years ago where I began to sense that our court was retreating from that full commitment to the rule of law I began to worry that we wouldn't be able to win brown versus board of education and it pains me to have to worry that our court

today might not be willing to do something that disruptive on behalf of disfavored people and when I understood that I realized we were going to have to get outside of the courts and begin working on the narratives that are causing people to think that we can tolerate racial inequality we can tolerate racial injustice we can tolerate bigotry it's that tolerance that kind of force me to see that narrative work has to be a priority you know we're living at a time when the politics

of fear and anger are raging and the problem when people allow themselves to be governed by fear

“and anger they start tolerating things you should never tolerate you start accepting things you”

should never accept and that means we have to push people to understand the harm of these narratives

and that very much was a turning point and you're right we continue to go to court we continue to fight for our clients and I will continue to do that but I see this narrative work as essential not only to confront this history but to protect the commitment to the rule of law that allows our democracy to be healthy when you are growing up in a segregated part of the state of Delaware and you are going to a segregated school what's the narrative your parents gave you to try to

help you understand what segregation really meant you know it's interesting people just didn't

whom didn't have high school degrees not because they weren't smart or hardworking but there were literally no high schools where black people in our county when my dad was a teenager and his generation came of age and so we wanted something better they wanted something better and so when the lawyers came in and said we're going to push for integration they were very enthusiastic I think

“we were told that okay if we get you into the school you have to represent not just yourself”

but you have to represent everybody you have to prove to people that these narratives of racial and fury are false you have to prove to people that this fear of blackness is something that is completely misguided and so I really did believe that when I got in a it wasn't just my a it was my mom's a my grandma's a and my communities a when I kind of hit a home run playing little league baseball it wasn't just my home run it was the whole community's home run because

I knew they were cheering for me to overcome this presumption of dangerous and guilt and incompetence that had so denied them so many opportunities so it was less that people said things to me it's just that they showed up they were there to celebrate you and and to be honest Harry that

continues you know sometimes when I have a hard day it's always the miracle of somebody who just

“shows up I did a hearing a few years ago and Karen didn't go the way I wanted it to in my”

client got sentenced harshly and it just broke my heart was a young 14 year old person has been sentenced to a really harsh sentence and when he called me later I just got emotional apologizing to him I said I'm so sorry they should not have done it so sorry and I started crying and my client my young client said oh Mr Brian please don't cry I know you're going to get me out of here I don't want you to feel bad and of course when your young client is comforting you

it made me feel worse I felt like a really bad lawyer and I went through the whole rest of the day just feeling miserable and then that night I stopped into this little restaurant to get some food I was trying to get home I didn't want to talk to anybody and I walked into this restaurant and they were five older black women sitting at a table and when they saw me they recognized me they started waving and I waved back and I went over and I got my food and I was just trying to get

out of there but as I was walking out one of the older black women shouted across the restaurant she said hey come over here and I was a little embarrassed and I just stood there she said hey come over here and I went over to this older black woman and she said bend down and I didn't understand what she meant so she said it again she said bend down and I bent down and when I bent down she leaned up and she kissed me on the forehead and she said you keep on keeping on she didn't know anything

about my day but I just was transfixed and I just stood there she said go home go home each of

“food but when I got in my car when I got home I felt differently and I feel like that's what my”

community said to me they they said to me in this very kind of silent but important way you keep on

keeping on that was critical to how we were going to move forward that's a beautiful story

I guess as human rights lawyer Brian Stevenson found her an executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative he also founded and leads the legacy sites and museum and series of sites and public places in Montgomery, Alabama dedicated to educate and reflect on the harsh truths of American history will be right back this is fresh air this is fresh air let's get back to my interview with human rights lawyer Brian Stevenson found her an executive director of the

Equal Justice Initiative which represents children and adults unfairly convicted or sentenced he also founded and leads the legacy project and museum and series of sites and public places among Montgomery, Alabama dedicated to educate and reflect on the harsh truths of American history from slavery to reconstruction, Jim Crow and lynchings the new site is about the civil rights movement so Trump has appointed three Supreme Court justices giving the court a

supermajority of conservative justices and I'm wondering if you're seeing more conservative judges now than you did before and how that's affecting your work and your view of the criminal justice system I don't think there's any question at the nature of the work is absolutely

shifted I mean this court has a basically abandoned any oversight of the death penalty and so

you're now seeing executions taking place Florida's executed just dozens of people the court

and so yes it does change the disposition of judges I think in some state it's always been that

way we have a lot of states where judges are elected and so when you have a jurisdiction where they elect judges they've always been more attentive to popular ideas about things than what we expect from the federal courts the power of the federal court is that with life tenure they're supposed to be immune from the political preferences they're supposed to not worry about whether people are

“going to like or dislike their rulings they're going to do with the Constitution requires that's how”

we got Brown versus Board of Education that's how we got Miranda in the early 1960s that's how we got loving versus Virginia to end these bands on interracial marriage they knew that those decisions were not going to be popular but they decided that that was their obligation and so with a more political court you see a court that's more responsive to majoritarian preference you see a court that's more

responsive to the will of the powerful the will of the many and I've always regarded the court to be

the refuge of the powerless the refuge of those who are who are the minority whose rights are being challenged and so yes it does mean we have to talk and function differently I haven't given up on the court I haven't given up on other rule of law and this court has made some important decisions

“that have been corrective to this political moment I'd like to see more of that but there's no doubt”

that we're in an era where we are more vulnerable so one of the voting rights issues before the Supreme Court now might lead to further gutting of the voting rights act and I'm wondering if you can share what your concerns are about that well I just think that America became a different country in 1965 when we passed the voting rights act and we finally allowed millions of people who had been disenfranchised and excluded to participate in this political process the legal social

economic and cultural landscape of America changed we became a healthier democracy a better nation a more complete nation and rather than complaining about the voting rights act it should be celebrated and so these efforts to gut it to restrict it to undermine it caused me a lot of pain because I worry about a future where we are not doing everything we can to facilitate full political participation or once again going to try to marginalize people and silent people

and disempower people and so yes I'm very concerned I think that John Lewis before he died was committed to trying to reinvigorate the voting rights act and Congress failed to do that I think we're going to need Congress to step up and reassert their commitment that in this country we want everyone eligible to vote we want everyone who is part of this American experience to participate by voting and I think that's the hope the church was central to the civil rights movement

is a church still active like that it's church still seen is like a safe place and a place to organize the way it was in the 50s and 60s in Alabama in Montgomery where you live

“oh absolutely I think the church is still an important place and there are other institutions”

academic institutions cultural institutions that are doing things but I don't think you can replace the power and the spirit of people who come together you know it's getting to a space where you're allowed to sing sing these songs that encourage you may hear you jacks and came to Montgomery during the boycott to uplift people to inspire people the march of Washington she was there singing how I got over you need a space where that tradition of using everything you have to find your

strength and your courage is important so I do think faith institutions have a critical role

to play and will continue to do that I also think that they're supposed to know things about what truth and reconciliation truth and restoration truth and repair looks like at least in my church you can't come in there and say I want heaven and salvation and all the good stuff but I'm not going to confess anything the clergy in my community will say oh no doesn't work like that you got to be willing to repent you got to be willing to confess but then they'll say but don't fear it

because repentance and confession acknowledgment is what opens up your heart to grace and mercy

opportunity to do something that up lives so finally I have to ask you about Michael B. Jordan because he played you in the movie adaptation of your memoir Just Mercy I imagine you saw recently when an Oscar for sinners yes what was it like for you to watch the actor who played you get the Oscar but not for playing you for sinners yes no I'm so proud of him you know I made a little video and sent it to him just because I think it's really remarkable first of all

he did an amazing job in sinners playing those dual characters who had just dreams of of being

loved and having fulfillment and wanting to be free and not being able to achieve those dreams

“because the boundaries and borders created by racial bigotry I think that's what Ryan and the”

cast put together in that film sinners that was so powerful so I was enormously proud of him it did create a moment of just bizarreness for me because one of my clients on the road called me and said hey Brian I heard you became a vampire I don't know if I want you to come and see me I was like no man I haven't become a vampire that's Michael B you know and he's in a movie so don't don't worry about that and and and I could not be prouder of Michael B and the entire

cast Ryan has done an amazing job with the film she's created but I thought it was a really

important story and I love that it was a story that told something a typical yes it was entertaining it was scary but it it's situated and truths about our history that that are important for people to understand and so yeah I was incredibly proud of him Brian Stevenson it was really just such a pleasure to talk with you thank you so much for your work and for coming back on our show my pleasure Terry Brian Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the equal justice initiative

and the founder of the legacy sites you wrote the introduction to a new companion book called the Legacy sites a history of racial injustice Stevenson's memoir was adapted into a 2019 film called Just Mercy it starred Michael B Jordan who just won an Oscar for his performance in sinners as Stevenson here's a courtroom scene from the film it's easy to see this case is one man trying to prove his innocence but when you take a black man and you put him on death row a year

before his trial and exclude black people from serving on his jury when you base your conviction on a course testimony of a white film and ignore the testimony of two dozen law abiding black witnesses when any evidence proven his innocence is suppressed and anyone who tries to tell

“the truth is threatened this case becomes more than the trial of just a single defendant”

it becomes a test of whether we're going to be governed by fear and by anger or by the rule of law if the people standing in the back of this courtroom are all presumed guilty when accused if they have to leave here and live in fear of when this very thing will happen to them if we're just going to accept the system that treats you better if you're rich and guilty then if you're poor and innocent then we can't claim to be just

if we say we're committed to equal justice under law to protect in the rights of every citizen regardless of wealth, race or status then we have to end this nightmare for Walter McMillan and his family the charges against them have been proven to be a false construction of desperate people fueled by bigotry and bias who ignore the truth and exchange for easy solutions and that's not the law that's not justice

and it's not right. tomorrow on fresh air, America's first AI war is unfolding right now

“in the war with Iran the Pentagon's secret campaign to build America's AI warfare capabilities”

is called Project Maven our guests will be Bloomberg reporter Katrina Manson the author of a new book about that project and the obsessive marine kernel behind it I hope you'll join us to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews follow us on Instagram @npr fresh air fresh air's executive producer is Sam Brigger our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham today's interview was recorded by Charlie

Kire with additional engineering from Adam Stanishewski our interviews and reviews are produced

Thayah Challenger Susan Yukundi and Abelman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler our digital media producer is Molly Steven Esper Roberta Shorock directs the show our co-host is Tanya Mosley I'm Terry Gross