Bryan Stevenson, the Formation of the Equal Justice Initiative, and the Fight against the “Stepchild of Lynching”

Abstract

This chapter explains the motivations of Bryan Stevenson and the rise of the EJI. We study how Stevenson’s legal work, his involvement with America’s justice system, and his best-selling book, Just Mercy, contributed to the formation of the EJI. Through a close reading of Just Mercy, we argue that Stevenson and his EJI garnered international attention as a response to the believed complacency of civil rights activism and its forgetting of the legacy of racial terrorism.