Bryan Stevenson: podcast appearances and interviews

Bryan Stevenson is an American lawyer, social justice activist, and law professor at New York University School of Law. He is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization based in Montgomery, Alabama. His work focuses on challenging bias against the poor and minorities within the criminal justice system, with particular attention to children. Stevenson has contributed to legal efforts that led to United States Supreme Court decisions prohibiting the sentencing of juvenile offenders to death or mandatory life terms without parole. He is known for defending individuals such as Walter McMillian, who was unjustly sentenced to death, a case he detailed in his memoir. Stevenson initiated the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery to honor over 4,000 African Americans lynched between 1877 and 1950 in twelve southern states. He argues that the history of slavery and lynchings has had a lasting impact on the high rate of death sentences in the South, where such sentences are disproportionately applied to minorities. Additionally, he established The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which explores the historical connection between slavery, lynchings, and the continuation of racial disparities in incarceration and capital punishment in the United States.