But that narrative of racial difference, this presumption of dangerousness and guilt continued past that era - and we're still burdened with it today. And then when we got to the civil rights movement, we had this heroic moment. Black people were pulled out of their homes, beaten, drowned, burned, tortured and lynched.

And this wasn't a narrative we had actually articulated.Īfter the Civil War, there were 100 years of terrorism and violence. We passed the 13th Amendment that prohibits involuntary servitude, enforced labor, but it doesn't say anything about ending this narrative of racial difference, and because of that, I don't think slavery ended in 1865. For me, that has to change if we're going to get to the kind of healthy place I think we need to get to.'Īfter the Civil War, there were 100 years of terrorism and violence. 'We actually celebrate the architects and defenders of enslavement. 'In the American South, where I live, the landscape is littered with the iconography of the Confederacy,' Stevenson says. He says that the fact that his state honors Lee at all - let alone on the same day as King - is a sign that America has not acknowledged the evils of its past. The new movie, Just Mercy, is an adaptation of his 2014 memoir of the same name. Public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson lives in Alabama and is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, which works to combat injustice in the U.S.

Lee, commander of the Confederate forces during the Civil War. federal holiday honoring the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., but two Southern states - Alabama and Mississippi - also use the day to celebrate Gen. Bryan Stevenson is the author of the memoir Just Mercy, which was recently adapted into a film starring Michael B.

Just mercy stevenson