BRYAN

STEVENSON

SOCIAL JUSTICE INNOVATOR

The human rights lawyer, whose memoir is the basis of a forthcoming feature

film, has devoted his life to fighting for the convicted and the condemned

as part of a larger struggle against injustice in the legal system and beyond.

BY DONOVAN X. RAMSEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY LATOYA RUBY FRAZIER

118

I

N MID-SEPTEMBER, human rights lawyer Bryan

Stevenson took the stage at the 30th-anniver-

sary gala for the Equal Justice Initiative, the

Montgomery, Alabama–based nonprofit he

founded to provide legal representation to indi-

viduals who have been wrongfully convicted,

unfairly sentenced or subject to prison abuse. The

attendees assembled in a hotel ballroom in Midtown

Manhattan were a mix of philanthropists, scholars

and attorneys. The poet Elizabeth Alexander, who

read at President Obama’s first inauguration, was

there, as was musician Jon Batiste. Most knew what

EJI does and who Stevenson is. They’d likely heard

him speak many times before. But that was sort of

the point.

Stevenson, 59, is soft-spoken and earnest. Even

onstage, he speaks in a way that makes the audi-

ence lean in and listen close. By the time he shares

his simple but powerful ideas—like his oft-repeated

belief that each of us is “more than the worst thing

we’ve done”—listeners are invested in every word.

The effect is an opening up that doesn’t normally

come from a fundraiser presentation.

When the three-hour program was over, Steven-

son—who had traveled to a different state every day

for the five days leading up to the gala—stood near the

stage and generously received the throng of people

who lined up to meet him, have books signed and take

selfies. He later admits that he’s naturally shy.

If he is, Stevenson hides it well. He has won five of

the six cases he has argued before the Supreme Court

and delivered a TED Talk that has garnered more than

seven million views to date. He has written a best-sell-

ing memoir, Just Mercy, about his life and work and is

also the subject of a recent HBO documentary, True

Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality. He’s also

a professor at the New York University School of Law.

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow:

Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, first

met Stevenson nearly two decades ago when they

both were young lawyers. “I heard him speak to a

small group of students at Stanford Law School,

and he blew my mind,” she says. “He was passion-

ate and dedicated, but he was more than that. He

spoke with a moral clarity, a clarity that shone so

bright that at first many people in the room seemed

restless, uncomfortable.”

Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel

of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,

is another leading civil rights attorney who counts

Stevenson as a friend. “He exudes something that is

very, very powerful, and that is a deep, deep sincer-

ity and commitment to the principles that he believes

in,” she says. “You feel it, you know it, and you hear it

not only in the words he says but in the very timbre

of his voice.”

The next day, at the New York office of Penguin

Random House, Stevenson’s publisher, everything

about him seems muted and measured, from his lean

physique and cleanshaven head to the fitted black

suit and turtleneck he wears. He declines water and

takes up as little space as possible in the small confer-

ence room, sitting squarely in his chair with one leg

crossed over the other and his hands in his lap. 

I ask Stevenson how he transforms from the re-

served man before me into a lawyer, sought-after

lecturer and public intellectual. “You get to the point

where you feel like you have some fire shut up in your

bones,” he says, referencing the prophet Jeremiah.

HONOR GUARD Bryan Stevenson at the National Memorial

for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The year-old

memorial to the over 4,000 victims of lynching includes jars

of soil collected at each murder site. Stevenson holds the

jar for Willie Temple, who was killed in Montgomery in 1919.

119