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

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

In his second term, President Trump has ordered the removal of monuments, plaques and exhibitions related to slavery, and the history of racial injustice in the U.S. Meanwhile, human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson has been working to ensure evidence of America's painful past is not erased. His organization, the Equal Justice Initiative, founded the Legacy Museum to show us the truth of our history. “You can't get the beautiful ‘R’ words, like redemption and reconciliation and restoration and repair, unless you first tell the truth,” he tells Terry Gross.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. In his 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 in 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 Stevenson 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 10 years later with the marches from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights. The third of those marchers, the one that was successfully completed, a rioting. at its destination, Montgomery Square, 61 years ago today. Montgomery Square is both the location and the name of the new exhibit. It's part of the legacy sites, which includes sites in 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 Stevenson, 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 in 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, his role in sinners. The Equal Justice Initiative also has a new book called Legacy Sites,

A History of Racial Injustice. Brian Stevenson, 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 statutes 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 endured 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 things happened. 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. You know, 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 us. I genuinely think there's

something better waiting for us. 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 that is where the Equal Justice Initiative, which you created, and the legacy sites 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 Sillima 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 black population lived at the end of the, 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, through 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 well 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 enslavers, 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 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 uncovers new things about the civil rights movement in Montgomery and also reiterates, you know, some of the history. And I learned something like really basic that 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, you know, black people were allowed to sit. And what would sometimes happen is that then as you were exiting the front before you got on to the back, the bus would pull out without you. So you've paid your money. You face the humiliation of having to leave. And then the bus leaves without you. It was one of many things that just made riding the bus is 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 way the buses and segregation work. The first 10 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. Hilliard 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 men were 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 in 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. You know, what would prompt many of the arrests 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 riders in Montgomery. One of the people who faced what we were talking about a couple of minutes ago about, you know, 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 the story goes, that she wasn't going to go to the back of the bus because her feet were tired. But tell us about this incident where she had to, like, leave the bus and board through the back and things did not work out.

Well, regular bus riders 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 195, 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, just grieving the death of Emmett Till. It was the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi and hearing from people in Mississippi 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. Ariel Browder, Mary Louise Smith, Sophia McDonnell refused to give up their seats between March and December, and the pressure was building, and on December 1, Ms. Park said, I'm not going to move, and that was the trigger.

Had she already joined the NACP when she refused to give up her seat? 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 NWACP 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 this 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 until 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 are tired? You know, 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, you know, to continuing the struggle. She didn't stop being an activist after the West Boycott. She was here in 1965 when the march from Selma to Montgomery took place. She worked for John Conyers 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 up her seat named Viola 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, raped 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 Hilliard 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 uglier 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 bigotry 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 Improven 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 Ms. Carr would send me places to speak and send me places to listen. And then one day she called me. She said, Brian Rosa Parks is coming to town. Do you want to come and spend time with us? I said, I do. And I went to the home of a white woman named Virginia Durr, whose husband Clifford Durr had represented Dr. King.

And I sat on the porch for two hours for the first time with Mrs. Parks. And what was remarkable was 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, 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 treat you better if you're rich and 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. We're trying to change the way we operate these jails and prisons. I gave her my whole rap. And when I finished, she looked at me and she said, that's going to make you tired, tired, tired. And that's when Ms. Car leaned 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 this 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 winked. 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 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 do good. She was an amazing human being and she was a fighter. She had the heart of a warrior

and the grace of the extraordinary woman she was. So you were told at that time that you had to be brave if you're going to do the work that you were doing in Montgomery, Alabama. What other 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 bloodied 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 bloodied 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 segregation would. And 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 to believe 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 that 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 is human rights lawyer Brian Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He also founded and leads the legacy sites, a 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 Stevenson, 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, a museum, and series of sites in public places in 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. So Brown versus Board of Ed, which was a Supreme Court decision that declared that separate but 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? You know, 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 indecent or un-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 US 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 Constitution 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, well, why are we still dealing with? How did this continue into 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 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, an 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 that 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 and racial injustice. You know, Fred Gray, the amazing lawyer who represented Dr. King and Rosa Parks, who's 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've got to get back to 1965. We've got to find a time machine and go back to 1965. And he's always so generous. He said, okay, what are we 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 passed 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. We didn't require anything from them. We said, we're going to have a justice department that's going to police you, and that's got to be the thing that disincentivizes 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 who enslaved other people never were held accountable for the 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 and 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 a daily basis never had to do anything to account for all of that harm. And that made it. And that made, 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. It 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. We 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 slash Robert E. 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 has 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 in justice, truth and reconciliation, truth in 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 R words 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. 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 and monuments and 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 Adolf Hitler statues in Berlin. There are no monuments and memorials to the Nazis. We've never done that in this country. In fact, we've done the opposite. it. 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 if we really committed to truth-telling about all of the harms of disenfranchisement, we might have said to these

states that disenfranchised people for 100 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, we could say, 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 without people being beaten by the police, those marches led to the Voting Rights Act. Was voting especially difficult? in Montgomery or Alabama in general, like even more difficult than other southern states? 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? Like when you go to vote, are you... 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 decide, 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 precincts than white precincts, 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, you know, for a very substantial period of time toward 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, in 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 gerrymandering 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 Lowry, people like Joanne Bland, started getting arrested when they were eight and nine years old because they wanted their parents 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 Boynton Robinson was just almost killed by horses and police officers. Linda Blackman Lowry said she got hit and she passed out. And for 40 years, she assumed that she passed out because she hit her head on the ground. And then when they uncovered documentary footage, she realized that she passed out and she was in that condition because after she, 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. You know, we recently lost Dr. Bernard Lafayette, an 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 it, 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, by 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 EJI. He would talk to our staff. But that's, 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 in 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 shoved a fork up his nose into his throat. They beat him so badly, he had a heart attack and almost died. But when he recovered, he did not waver. He went to the very churches 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. And I think when you have a relationship to people like that, you just realize that, you just realized 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 news site, you know, you read the speeches of Dr. King who talk 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 there are seats at the table.

And I know that John Lewis and I know that Claudette Colvin, and I know that Dr. Lafayette and Dr. Perkins and Joanne Bland have a seat at that table. And I started thinking about how I've 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, a museum and series of sites in 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 Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He also founded and leads the Legacy Project and Museum and series of sites in public places in 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, we'll 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 800s? What sources did you use? Yeah, we went through archives and newspapers in every county across the American South. There had been research done by Monroe work, African American sociologists 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 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 who 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 of violence because the black people in Chicago and Cleveland, Detroit, and 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 re 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, were there lynchings reported in newspapers that put it in a narrative that was positive? Like, so-and-so who, you know, raped 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 were 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 6 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 opened our site, the editor of the Montgomery Advertiser was very critical because he said, oh, 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 talk to us. And I said, well, that's because I have some concerns about whether I can trust you. And I said, the Montgomery Advertiser 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, 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 a democracy. These mobs 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 this at our National Memorial, people were lynched not for accusations of a crime. A lot of times

people were lynched for social transgressions. We've got instances where 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 man who had 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. It wasn't punishment. They could have just buried the bodies of lynching victims to try to hide it, to try to get more people lynch 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 saying. 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'd 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 an era, where we're beginning to see mobs act in violent ways, when 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 for 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 founded. 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, our other democratic institutions couldn't. And I learned that firsthand, you know, I was in a county that was 80% white, 20% black, you had a vote in our county about whether black kids 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 throughout 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 angers. 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 were growing up in a segregated part of the state of Delaware and you were 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 talk about it. We grew up in this poor, racially segregated community, the people around me, most of whom didn't have high school degrees, not because they weren't smart or hardworking, but there were literally no high schools for 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, were going to push for integration, they were very enthusiastic. I think we were told that, okay, if we get you into this 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 inferiority

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 an A, it wasn't just just my A, it was my mom's A, my grandma's A, and my community's 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 dangerousness 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 to be honest, Terry, 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, and my client got sentenced harshly. And it just broke my heart. It was a young 14-year-old person who had 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. Bryant, please don't cry. I know you're going to get me out of fear. 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 in this little restaurant to get some food. I was just trying to get home. I didn't want to talk to anybody. And I walked into this restaurant. And there were five older black women sitting at a table. And when they were five older black women sitting at a table. And when they saw me, they recognized me, and 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, eat your 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 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.

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, a museum and series of sites in 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 Stevenson, 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, a museum,

and series of sites in public places in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated to educate and reflect on the harsh truths of American history, from slavery to reconstruction, Jim Crow, and lynchings, 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 that the nature of the work has absolutely shifted. I mean, this court has a basically abandon any oversight of the death penalty. And so you're now seeing executions taking place.

Florida has executed just dozens of people. The court hasn't granted a stay of execution in years. And so that has allowed lower courts to kind of step back. And so, yes, it does change the disposition of judges. I think in some states, 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 courts 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 what 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 bans 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 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 the 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 the voting rights act. worry about a future where we are not doing everything we can to facilitate full political participation.

We're once again going to try to marginalize people and silence 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 re-envigorated. 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? The church still seen as 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. Mahalia Jackson 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, it doesn't work like that. You've got to be willing to repent. You've got to be willing to confess. But then they'll say, but don't fear it. Because repentance and confession, acknowledgement is what

opens up your heart to grace and mercy. And grace and mercy is what yields redemption and reconciliation and restoration, it is a moral opportunity to do something that uplifts. So finally, I have to ask you about Michael B. Jordan, because he played you in the movie adaptation of your memoir, Jess Mercy. I imagine you saw him recently win 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. 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 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 centers, 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 worry about that. And I could not be prouder of Michael B. And the entire cast, Ryan has done an amazing job with the films he's created, but I thought it was a really important story, and I love that it was a story that told something atypical. Yes, it was entertaining, it was scary, but it's situated in truths about our history 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, an executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, and the founder of the Legacy Sites. He 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. 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 coerced testimony of a white felon, 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 than 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 protecting 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 ignored the truth in exchange for easy solutions, and that's not the law. That's not justice. That'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 guest will be Bloomberg reporter Katrina Manson, the author of a new book about that project, and the obsessive Marine Colonel 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 at 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 Kier with additional engineering from Adam Stanishefsky. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baudenado,

Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yucundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Roberta Shorock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.