Race in America: Fighting for Justice with Bryan Stevenson

The driving force behind the powerful lynching monument in Montgomery, Ala., Bryan Stevenson is also the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of the critically acclaimed memoir, “Just Mercy.” He is focused on eliminating excessive sentencing, exonerating innocent prisoners on death row, and working to help children who are prosecuted as adults. On Thursday, Oct. 1 at 10:00 a.m. ET, Stevenson discussed his anti-poverty efforts, racial discrimination in the criminal justice system and the ongoing protests against police brutality across the United States with Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart.

Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults. He led the creation of EJI’s highly acclaimed cultural sites, the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened in 2018. Mr. Stevenson’s work has won him numerous awards, including over 40 honorary doctorates, the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Prize, and the ABA Medal, the American Bar Association’s highest honor. He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government and the author of the award-winning New York Times bestseller, Just Mercy, which was recently adapted as a major motion picture.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Capehart is a member of The Washington Post editorial board, writes about politics and social issues, and hosts the “Cape Up” podcast. He is also an MSNBC Contributor, who regularly serves as a substitute anchor, and has served as a guest host on “Midday on WNYC” on New York Public Radio. Capehart was deputy editorial page editor of the New York Daily News from 2002 to 2004, and served on that paper’s editorial board from 1993 to 2000. In 1999, his 16-month editorial campaign to save the famed Apollo Theatre in Harlem earned him and the board the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing. Capehart left the Daily News in July 2000 to become the national affairs columnist at Bloomberg News, and took a leave from this position in February 2001 to serve as a policy adviser to Michael Bloomberg in his first successful campaign for New York City mayor.

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