Chapter Four

The Old Rugged Cross

In February 1989 , Eva Ansley and I opened our new nonprofit law center in Tuscaloosa,
dedicated to providing free, quality legal services to condemned men and women on death
row in Alabama. We never thought it would be easy, but it turned out to be even harder than
we had expected.
In the first few months of operation our first director resigned, the University of Alabama
School of Law where we had set up the office withdrew their support and promise of office
space, and we discovered just how hard it was to find lawyers to come to Alabama and do
full-time death penalty work for less than $ 25 , 000 a year.
Obstacles were multiplying rapidly. We were denied funding from the state legislature,
which we needed to get federal matching dollars. After several disheartening meetings with
our board, it had become clear that we had no support in the state for the project. State bar
leaders were committed to seeing our operation succeed—some because they felt it was
unacceptable that condemned prisoners could not obtain legal assistance, others because they
wanted more executions at a faster pace and felt that the absence of counsel was slowing
them down—but we now realized that we would have to do it on our own and raise the
money ourselves. Eva and I regrouped and decided to start again in Montgomery, the state
capital. The project would eventually be named the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).
I found a small building near downtown Montgomery, and in the summer of 1989 we
signed a lease. The building was a good start: a rented two-story Greek Revival house built in
1882 , near the historic district called “Old Alabama Town.” It was painted yellow and had a
charming porch that made it feel open and welcoming—a nice contrast from the daunting
courtrooms, institutional waiting rooms, and prison walls that defined so much of the lives of
our clients’ family members. The office was cold in the winter, it was almost impossible to
keep squirrels out of the attic, and there wasn’t enough electricity to run the copier and a
coffeepot at the same time without blowing a fuse. But from the start it felt like a home and a
place to work—and given the hours we would spend there, it was always a little of both.
Eva took on administrative duties for our new project, which were pretty challenging given
that federal dollars came with all kinds of complex reporting and accounting requirements.