Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson (born November 14, 1959) is an American lawyer, social justice activist, law professor at New York University School of Law, and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative.

Stevenson was born to African American parents in Milton, Delaware in 1959. The U. S. Supreme Court had ended official school segregation policies in 1954, but the first schools Stevenson attended were still racially segregated. When that ended, he was in the first group of students in his state to attend racially integrated schools.

He graduated from Harvard University in 1985 with a double degree in law and public policy. He worked as an intern at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. That work showed him that the American legal system worked one way if you had money and another way if you were poor. He found that, for similar crimes, more poor people (who were usually African American) received the death penalty than other people did.

He started the Equal Justice Initiative in 1989. This organization had good lawyers help poor people who were in prison on death row in Alabama. Receiving a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1995 helped him to build the EJI.

In 2014 Stevenson's book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption was read by many people. More people learned about his work for fairness in the legal system. The book became a movie in 2019.

 References 

Other websites
 Equal Justice Initiative
 Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice | TED
 On Being. "Bryan Stevenson: Finding the Courage for What's Redemptive"

Category:1959 births
Category:American lawyers
Category:American human rights activists
Category:Living people