The Current - Civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson believes America needs truth telling now more than ever

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

As the Trump administration clamps down on exhibits focused on race and slavery, Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative is expanding its monuments in Alabama. The civil rights lawyer telling the truth about America's past is key to ensuring its democratic future.

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Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Every country has a story, and narrative it tells itself about its past and what it has become. That story isn't always the same as the truth, though. In the United States right now, some people would prefer not to talk about the country's history of racial injustice. U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the Smithsonian Institute to review its exhibits, accusing the museum of focusing too much on how bad slavery was and not enough on the brightness

of America. Here is Trump speaking in August at the White House. We want the museums to talk about the history of our country in a fair manner, not in a woke manner or in a racist manner. Well, Brian Stevenson, for one, is not going to stop talking about the ugly parts of America's past and what needs to happen to defend democracy. Brian is a civil rights lawyer, founder of the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative, which fights wrongful convictions and challenges racial and economic injustice. In the last decade, that organization has created several museums and monuments in Montgomery, Alabama, focused on racial injustice, which is also a movie about Brian's life based on

his memoir, Just Mercy. Brian Stevenson is in Chicago. Brian, good morning. Good morning. Good to be with you. Good to have you here. When you hear your president talk about the museums in your country as being woke and racist, what goes through your mind?

Well, I think it's very misinformed. I doubt the president has actually been to any of the museums that he's accusing of this distortion of history. I actually think we've made a little progress in the last decade in helping our nation more honestly being reckoned with our history. The African American History Museum in Washington, the Smithsonian, didn't open until 2015, which meant that for most of America's history, we didn't have a cultural institution. The federal government supported that talked honestly about the legacy of slavery or, or, segregation or lynching. We still have a really remarkable absence of cultural institutions to deal honestly with this history. That's the reason why we created our legacy sites.

But the other thing that crosses my mind when I hear the president say that is I think he is going to burden generations of Americans with the same weight, the same contamination, the same pollution that my generation inherited. We have a history of slavery, of racial injustice. And I think it's corrupt at the atmosphere. It's like toxins in the atmosphere. And if we just had the courage to talk honestly about this past, I think we could get to something better. Why do you think some Americans don't want to talk about the parts of your history that are really uncomfortable, whether it's slavery or lynching or segregation? Why do they avoid talking about that? Well, I think we've never had to. I look at what happened in South Africa

after the collapse of apartheid. You know, a black majority took over. They were able to shake the future, and they insisted on a process of truth and reconciliation. And I think that helped that country move forward by giving space to the black victims of apartheid to talk about their harm, their trauma, their suffering. It did something important. And a handful of perpetrators also gave voice to their regret, and that did something important. In Germany, you see a nation that has reckoned with the history of the Holocaust in a pretty radical way. The Holocaust Memorial is in the center of Berlin. Students in Germany are required to study the history of the Holocaust. And I think that has helped that country move into the 21st century. They were the villain of the 20th century, but now they're considered an ally, a strong partner, a believer in democracy. And they're not perfect, but they've made progress. In the United States, we haven't made that same commitment. And you have to understand, a black majority took over after apartheid collect.

in South Africa. The Nazis lost the war. And so there was a shift in power. There's never really been a shift in power in the United States. Even the civil war, which was fought over the institution of slavery, I've always believed that the great evil of slavery wasn't involuntary servitude, enforced labor, bondage, humiliation, violence, all of those things were horrific. The great evil, though, of slavery, for me, the enduring evil was the enduring narrative. of racial difference that we created to justify enslavement. People who enslaved other people didn't want to think of themselves as immoral or indecent or unchristian. And so how do you feel decent when you're pulling away mothers from their screaming children, knowing those mothers will

never see those children again because you're selling them? Well, you need a narrative. And we created a false narrative in America where we said that black people aren't as good as white people. And that narrative gave rise to an ideology of white supremacy, of racial hierarchy, and the North won the Civil War, but the South won, the narrative war, those ideas persisted past the Civil War. That's the narrative struggle that you've talked about that's playing right now in the United States, you believe? Absolutely. I mean, I do think we are in the midst of a narrative struggle, and I believe it is our generation, my generation, and younger people who now must take up this struggle. And I put this in historical context. When you're enslaved, you have to focus on freedom.

The enslaved in this country couldn't get to the narrative because they had to focus on their freedom. During the first half of the 20th century, we're dealing with racial terrorism throughout the American South. And when you're being terrorized like that, you have to focus on security. In the 1950s and 60s, we had a courageous generation who had gotten to a slightly more secure place, and they began focusing on civil rights. And that generation of civil rights activism made it possible for me and people of my generation to get college degrees, to get professional degrees. And now we're finally positioned to engage in the narrative struggle,

to confront this false idea of racial hierarchy and white supremacy and racial difference, to push this nation to something better. And museums and literature and content, creative content, are the beginnings of this struggle, and you're seeing a reaction against it. And the only thing I would stress on that is whenever there has been a forward step, when abolitionists began talking about ending slavery, the South reacted violently. They made it a capital crime for an enslaved person to be in possession of abolitionist material. During the time of terror violence, they burned down the home of Ida B. Wells for her activism

against terrorism and lynching. During the civil rights movement, black people were threatened and menaced and, fired and people were killed, segregation was calcified in some areas, but we prevailed. And so you're now seeing, I think, that moment of resistance to progress in the comments of President Trump and many others who are characterizing a future unburdened by racial inequality, a future unburdened by this legacy of slavery and lynching as woke. When I see it as just a better America, a greater America, America that has the opportunity to be all that we talk about in our language, in our Constitution, and in our literature.

Practically, what should those institutions that receive federal funding like the Smithsonian do when the president says he wants their funding to be reviewed, but also their exhibits to be reviewed so that they show the brightness of America? What should they do, do you think? I really think they have to resist, and I know that's not comfortable. I know that's not. Is that practical for them, given the federal funding that they receive? I think it is. I mean, I say this. I should qualify my comments because our sites, we didn't take a penny of federal funding when we built our sites. And so it's easier for me to take this position. I want to acknowledge that. I say we didn't take a penny. We were actually never offered a penny for our sites. But I don't think we can let funding sources shape, control, and restrict the content in cultural institutions. because cultural institutions lose their integrity, they lose their credibility, they lose their

purpose when they are censored and sanctioned. And so it may mean that they're going to have to shift to a model that relies entirely on private support. But I really believe that's a better way forward. Even though our cultural institutions don't get federal funding, we are a non-profit organization. You know, the government may come after us and say, we're going to take away your 501c3 status, which is a status that allows people to donate to us and then get tax credits. If you take away that status, it'll be much harder for us. But as I said before, I would rather be taxed and a truth teller than to be silent and untaxed. What about beyond cultural institutions?

I mean, you also have, you have law firms, you have universities, you have newspapers that fear retribution and fear that they need. need to bend the knee. And they say that they have to do this. The leaders of those institutions, and we saw this particularly in the law firms, say that they have to do it because they don't have a choice. That if they don't, to your point, the administration could come after them and destroy them. Well, yeah, I think they do have a choice. Many law firms accommodated the president's demands and gave in to this. But many law firms didn't. They resisted. They sued. And I think they have come out of that chapter as victors, as the institutions to respect.

Many educational institutions are pushing back. They're saying no. And yes, there will be costs to that. And I think there's never a way to move toward justice. There's never a way to achieve the kind of freedom that many of us believe in without cost. It's never been true. And during the time of enslavement, there were huge costs. During the time of lynching, huge costs, the civil rights movement.

was never comfortable. It was never convenient. People would be on their knees praying for the right to vote. They'd get beaten and battered and bloodied. They'd go home, change their clothes, wipe the blood off, and they'd go back and do it again. And for me, that is the lesson that I'm taking into this moment. Yes, there will be consequences to standing up when people say sit down, to speaking when people say be quiet. But those consequences are far less than the consequences of tolerating bigotry, giving in to authoritarianism. And I think that's the best moments in world history are the moments when people said no at great cost.

It said no, even though it might mean that they lose something. We're not doing it just to be oppositional. We're doing it because we believe there's something better. I talk about slavery and lynching and segregation, not because I want to punish America. I talk about these institutions because I want to liberate us. I want to create a nation where the children of our children are no longer burdened by this history, where black kids are not presumed dangerous and guilty because of their color, where white and black and brown communities have an opportunity to relate with one another without the scourge, the bigotry, the violence of our history constraining those relationships. And that's the offer, is that when we fight, when we resist, there is something I think we can win, just as we won and into it.

enslavement. We won an end to the kind of terror violence, that mob violence and lynching that represented the first half of the 20th century. And we won a kind of end to legal segregation, codified segregation, not that long ago. This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors all doing so much, so little. You've got to be Scarborough, defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo.ca.a.

Norval Morso is one of the most famous indigenous artists ever. Looking at his paintings, it's easy to see why. Colors are intense. Color as medicine. But look a little closer and you'll see something else. Fakes. We believe it's a world's biggest art fraud. There are thousands of fake Norval-Moroso paintings beneath some of these forgeries, assaults, abuse, and even an unsolved murder. I want my paint back. I know you killed that boy. Forged. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. One thing that people won in 1965 was the Voting Rights Act, which bar discrimination in voting. It was a landmark case, and there is real fear now that the Supreme Court could rule that ballot.

the Supreme Court last week heard a case that challenged part of the Voting Rights Act and the fear that people have, and it's not universally shared, but it's pretty acute in some corners, is that the important parts of that act could be gutted, that there's a belief that perhaps within the conservative majority on the court, that those protections that the Voting Rights Act offered are no longer necessary. Do you worry about that? And what would the impact of that be? Oh, I'm deeply worried about it. I think that we have a court, which, which is for the first time in my life, seemingly hostile to many of those civil rights victories that have made life so much better in America. Without the civil rights movement, we wouldn't

be having, you know, these college football games where schools and states rally behind the team. In Alabama, nothing is a greater source of pride than our college football teams. None of that success. None of those championships would have been possible without integration. Those teams are predominantly kids of color. We love sports in America. And we're forgetting that for decades, the best athletes couldn't play professional basketball or baseball or football. It took a civil rights movement. It took a change in the mindset.

And we've reaped the benefits of that. The problem is that we have a court that hasn't understood the challenges of this history in the context of things like voting. And I think the Supreme Court is just misinformed. of Alabama, where I live, never wanted to give black people the right to vote. They were forced to give black people the right to vote. Every southern legislator in 1965 voted against the Voting Rights Act. And after the Voting Rights Act was passed, they began scheming on how to limit the political power of black people. And that has gone on consistently from 1965 to today. And I think that's what this court is not appreciating, not understanding. And one of the consequences of not having

honest history is you have a lot of people in power, you have a lot of policymakers that are operating and making decisions with a skewed view of this history. We never did anything remedial in 1965 to help black people recover from a century of disenfranchisement. I joke sometimes. I want to go back to 1965 with my Harvard law degree. And I want to advocate. I want to ask for some different things than we asked for in 1965. I think in 1965, it would not have been wrong for black people to say, you need to repair the damage done by disenfranchisement. We do remedies in all kinds of contexts in business and corporation and tax. We create remedies. And if I could get back to 1965, I'd be asking and requiring these states to make it easier for black people to vote because

we made voting so difficult. I think black people should have been automatically registered in 1965. Just to reckon with the history of intimidation and violence that we subjected black people to when they went to the poll, I don't think it would have been wrong to put the burden on states like Mississippi and Georgia and Texas to go into black communities and get their votes. And that would have shown a real commitment to eliminating the harm, the burden, the bigotry that a hundred years of disenfranchisement had created. Instead, we resisted all of that. We didn't do any of that. Had we done those things, we might not need a voting rights act in 2025. We might be in a different place, but we did the opposite. We look for new schemes to disenfranchise. We look for new ways to

limit. We created gerrymandered political districts to limit the political power. That's been our history for the last 60 years. And so, yes, I am worried about what the court will do, but what encourages me is that it's too late. We've had the right to vote. We've elected too many people into positions of power. Black people in this country, poor people in this country,

marginalized people in this country, we'll never go back to the kind of conditions and the powerlessness and the depoliticized, disenfranchised state that we had. It's going to be tricky. But I am persuaded that whatever the court does, there is going to be a response and there is going to be a fight and a commitment on behalf of those who are being marginalized to make their voices heard.

That's a really optimistic and surprisingly optimistic, I think, to some people take on this. Because there are a lot of people who see this as, you know, a knife on the neck of democracy in the United States. When you look at actively disenfranchising people, removing black majority districts and perhaps tilting the table in favor of a different party, that that threatens democracy at its core. But there's a hint of optimism in what you're saying. Yeah, I want to be very sober about the threat. I mean, it would be a catastrophe for the court to undermine the Voting Rights Act. But you don't believe the people will allow that to continue. Well, I think there will be a moment of retreat.

But I am persuaded that we have many of us inherited this hope that makes it impossible for us to give into that. I mean, I started out as a lawyer representing people on death row in a state that had one of the highest execution rates in the country. We had no money. We had no resources. We had to believe things we have not seen. And I'm proud that we've gotten 150 people off of death row, many people who were wrongly convicted, many people who are free. We challenged conditions of confinement. We challenged death in prison sentences for children.

And people were saying there's no way that that will change. And now here we are. I think hopelessness is the enemy of justice. We are in a critical moment, a crisis moment in America. But the last thing we can afford to become is hopeless about our capacity to overcome this moment. Our hope is our superpower. I've just learned that. My great-grandparents were enslaved, and yet they had a hope of freedom. And it empowered them to do things that I think probably didn't make sense to the hopeless around them. My great-grandfather learned to read while he was enslaved, it was against the law.

He could have been sold. He could have been killed for learning to read, but his hope for freedom caused him to take that risk because he knew one day he was going to be free. And he didn't know in the 1850s that the Civil War would come in the 1860s, but there it came. And after emancipation, my grandmother said

he would read the newspaper to formerly enslaved people who didn't know how to read. And my grandmother worked as a domestic her whole life, but she was a reader. She would insist that we would read books, before she would sometimes let us in the house. And I grew up in a poor, racially segregated community.

But my mom bought us the World Book Encyclopedias when we were young kids. You didn't see a lot of hope outside the door. People were poor. People didn't have running water. People worked in the poultry plants. But in those books, I read all about the lawyers. I read about the great things that people did. And it is that legacy of hope that empowers me, that empowers the work that I do.

But I think it empowers many of us. we've come too far to be turned around now, we don't yet know whether what we're living through in America in 2025 is going to be a moment or it's going to be an era. I'm still pushing for it to be a moment, a moment that can be corrected. It'll be hard. It'll be complicated with these political decisions. But we have to believe that we can get to someplace better. The thing that I was given by the generation that came before me, is this understanding that hope is an orientation of the spirit. It's not rational and logical all the time. It's just a place you occupy in the midst of conflict and struggle. And they used to sing, we shall overcome, even in the face of violence

and brutalizing state troopers and police officers, even when they were being chased and menaced and threatened and bond, they still said, we shall overcome. Not we, we, hope to overcome, we shall. And that is rooted in that hope orientation. And I think the great things that America has done, they've done because there's a commitment and a spirit of hopefulness. And that's what I think we have to have to hold on to in this moment. We can't just give in to the politics of fear and anger. And a way to in some ways dishonor those whose shoulders you stand on, the people who came before you, right? Absolutely. I mean, I'm telling people today, look, Everybody in the United States, most people, would like to think that if they were alive during the time of enslavement, they would have been an abolitionist.

During the first half of the 20th century, when thousands of black people were being terrorized and lynched and maimed and tortured on courthouse lawns, most people would say, oh, I would have been fighting against lynching violence and terrorism. And so here we are in this moment of real crisis. And I believe you don't get to claim you would be an abolitionist or an anti-lynching crusader or a civil rights act. this, if you are silent now, you have to fight, you have to resist. You have to, as we say, stand up when people say sit down and speak, when people say be quiet. If you want to align yourself with that tradition, if you want to honor those who have truly made this country great, then you have to take that role. We owe it to our children and grandchildren. I really believe that. I just think we have practiced silence for too long. We've accommodated these four

for too long, there's something better waiting for us. There's something that feels more like freedom, like equality, like justice, and it's waiting for us. But we won't get there if we don't find our courage in this moment. If we don't push back against this movement, which is trying to deny, trying to silence those who believe that our best days are yet to come. People are looking for leaders. Do you ever think about politics? You know, it's a big deep breath before you answered that question. Well, it just, it scares me how many people are asking me about that. I've always believed that for me, the legal forum has been a better pathway to help the marginalize and disenfranchised. I mean, I'm a product of what lawyers did. I grew up in a county where

the population was 80% white, 20% black. If you had a vote in the 1960s about whether black kids could go to the public schools, we would have lost the vote. So it took lawyers to come into our community to enforce the Supreme Court's ruling that mandated educational opportunities for black kids. When I graduated from law school, I wanted to use that same power, that rule of law, expanding rights, because it's still true that the most disfavored people in this country, the marginalized, the poor, will continue to suffer in the political process, and therefore we have to create rights for them. There would be no marriage equality in the United States without a right. So I represent people on death row. We'd still be executing children without a right. We'd still be executing the intellectually disabled. I couldn't achieve that progress in the political process. We were able to achieve it in the courts. Now, I will admit that the current direction of the court

is raising questions about the future of the law as the place where we can do the most good, but I'm still committed to that space. And what I think we have to, to do is to create an environment outside the court to make sure that the court remains at the forefront of protecting those who will never have the political power that allows politics to operate in the way that best serves their needs. I'm really glad to have a chance to talk to you. I can imagine, and I understand why a lot of politicians and folks who in politics would come knocking at your door, but you're doing really important work in the space that you're in right now. Brian Stevenson, thank you very much. Oh, my pleasure. Brian Stevenson is the founder of the nonprofit

equal justice initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name's Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash