35 Facts About Bryan Stevenson

1.

Bryan Stevenson was born on November 14,1959 and 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.

2.

Bryan Stevenson has helped achieve United States Supreme Court decisions that prohibit sentencing children under 18 to death or to life imprisonment without parole.

3.

Bryan Stevenson has assisted in cases that have saved dozens of prisoners from the death penalty, advocated for the poor, and developed community-based reform litigation aimed at improving the administration of criminal justice.

4.

Bryan Stevenson was depicted in the 2019 legal drama film Just Mercy, based on his 2014 memoir Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.

5.

Bryan Stevenson initiated the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, which honors the names of each of more than 4,000 African Americans lynched in the twelve states of the South from 1877 to 1950.

6.

Bryan Stevenson argues that the history of slavery and lynchings has influenced the subsequent high rate of death sentences in the South, where it has been disproportionately applied to minorities.

7.

Bryan Stevenson's family had moved to the city from Virginia in the Great Migration of the early 20th century.

8.

Bryan Stevenson particularly emphasized the importance of education to her children.

9.

Bryan Stevenson's family attended the Prospect African Methodist Episcopal Church, where as a child, Bryan Stevenson played piano and sang in the choir.

10.

When Stevenson was 16, his maternal grandfather, Clarence L Golden, was stabbed to death in his Philadelphia home during a robbery.

11.

Bryan Stevenson spent his first classroom years at a "colored" elementary school.

12.

Bryan Stevenson's father, having grown up in the area, took the ingrained racism in his stride, but his mother openly opposed the de facto segregation.

13.

Bryan Stevenson attended Cape Henlopen High School and graduated in 1978.

14.

Bryan Stevenson served as president of the student body and won American Legion public speaking contests.

15.

Bryan Stevenson earned straight As and won a scholarship to Eastern University in St Davids, Pennsylvania.

16.

The center divided work by region and Bryan Stevenson was assigned to Alabama.

17.

Bryan Stevenson had a center in Montgomery, the state capital.

18.

Bryan Stevenson guaranteed a defense of anyone in Alabama sentenced to the death penalty, as it was the only state that did not provide legal assistance to people on death row.

19.

Bryan Stevenson was able to discredit every element of the prosecution's initial case, which led to McMillian being exonerated and released from jail in 1993.

20.

Bryan Stevenson has been particularly concerned about overly harsh sentencing of persons convicted of crimes committed as children, under the age of 18.

21.

Bryan Stevenson worked to have the court's thinking about appropriate punishment broadened to related cases applying to children convicted under the age of 17.

22.

Bryan Stevenson acquired six acres of former public housing land in Montgomery for the development of a new project, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, to commemorate the nearly 4,000 persons who were lynched in the South from 1877 to 1950.

23.

Bryan Stevenson has argued that this history of extrajudicial lynchings by white mobs is closely associated with the subsequent high rate of death sentences imposed in Alabama and other southern states, and to their disproportionate application to minority people.

24.

Bryan Stevenson further argues that this history influences the bias against minorities as expressed in disproportionately high mass incarceration rates for them across the country.

25.

Bryan Stevenson articulates how the treatment of people of color under the criminal justice system is related to the history of slavery and later treatment of minorities in the South.

26.

Bryan Stevenson maintains an active public speaking schedule, in large part for fundraising for the work of EJI.

27.

Bryan Stevenson's talk is available on the TED website; by April 2020, it had been viewed more than 6.5 million times.

28.

In June 2017, Bryan Stevenson delivered the 93rd Ware Lecture at the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in New Orleans, Louisiana.

29.

Bryan Stevenson is featured in episode 45 of the podcast Criminal by Radiotopia from PRX.

30.

On May 24,2018, Bryan Stevenson delivered the Commencement address for The Johns Hopkins University Class of 2018.

31.

On May 20,2019, Bryan Stevenson delivered the Commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania.

32.

On May 21,2021, Freedom, Justice, and Hope with Bryan Stevenson premiered on Jazz at Lincoln Center where he provided reflections on the American narrative of racism and performed pieces on the piano such as "Honeysuckle Rose".

33.

On May 8,2022, Bryan Stevenson delivered the Commencement address at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

34.

Bryan Stevenson became the second person to receive an honorary doctorate from the university, the other being Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee.

35.

Bryan Stevenson is a lifelong bachelor and has stated that his career is incompatible with married life.