Bryan Stevenson facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Bryan Stevenson
Stevenson in 2012
Born	(1959-11-14) November 14, 1959 (age 66) Milton, Delaware, U.S.
Education	Eastern University (BA) Harvard University (JD, MPP)
Occupation	Director of Equal Justice Initiative Professor at New York University School of Law
Known for	Founding Equal Justice Initiative
Relatives	Alonna Berry (cousin)
Awards	National Humanities Medal (2021)

Bryan Allen Stevenson, born on November 14, 1959, is an American lawyer, activist for social fairness, and a law professor at New York University School of Law. He is also the founder and leader of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). Based in Montgomery, Alabama, he works to make sure everyone, especially children, receives fair treatment in the legal system. Stevenson has played a key role in important decisions by the United States Supreme Court. These decisions mean that children under 18 cannot be sentenced to death or to life in prison without any chance of release.

His work was featured in the 2019 film Just Mercy, which was based on his 2014 book of the same name. In his book, he shares stories about helping people like Walter McMillian, who was wrongly accused and sentenced. Stevenson also created the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery. This memorial remembers thousands of African Americans who suffered from racial violence in the Southern United States between 1877 and 1950. He believes that understanding this history helps us see how important it is to have a fair legal system for everyone today.

Who is Bryan Stevenson?

Bryan Stevenson is a dedicated lawyer and activist who has spent his career fighting for justice and fairness. He believes that everyone deserves a second chance and that the legal system should treat all people fairly, no matter their background. His work focuses on helping those who are poor or from minority groups, especially young people, navigate the complex world of law.

Early Life and Family

Bryan A. Stevenson was born on November 14, 1959, in Milton, Delaware, a small town in southern Delaware. His father, Howard Carlton Stevenson Sr., grew up in Milton, and his mother, Alice Gertrude (Golden) Stevenson, was from Philadelphia. Her family had moved from Virginia during the Great Migration in the early 20th century. Bryan has an older brother, Howard Jr., and a sister, Christy.

Both of his parents traveled to the northern part of the state for their jobs. His father worked at a food processing plant, and his mother was an equal opportunity officer at Dover Air Force Base. His mother especially taught her children how important education was.

Stevenson's family attended the Prospect African Methodist Episcopal Church. As a child, Stevenson played piano and sang in the choir there. The strong faith of his church, which celebrated people for "standing up after having fallen down," influenced his later views. These experiences helped him believe that "each person in our society is more than the worst thing they've ever done."

When Stevenson was 16, his maternal grandfather, Clarence L. Golden, passed away due to a crime in his Philadelphia home during a robbery. The people responsible received life sentences, which Stevenson felt was a fair outcome. He said of the event, "Because my grandfather was older, his murder seemed particularly cruel. But I came from a world where we valued redemption over revenge."

As a child, Stevenson experienced segregation, which meant unfair rules that separated people based on their race. He spent his first school years at a "colored" elementary school. Even after schools were officially desegregated when he was in second grade, the old rules often still applied. Black children and white children played separately, and at doctors' offices, black families often used a back door while white families used the front. Pools and other community places were also informally separated. While his father accepted the racism he grew up with, his mother openly protested these unfair practices. Stevenson remembered in 2017 how his mother protested when black children had to wait for hours at the back door of a polio vaccination station while white children went in first.

Education and Discovering His Path

Stevenson attended Cape Henlopen High School and graduated in 1978. He was active in sports, playing on the soccer and baseball teams. He was also the president of the student body and won public speaking contests. His brother, Howard, helped him practice his speaking skills through their serious arguments, which were often inspired by their mother and family experiences.

Stevenson earned excellent grades and received a scholarship to Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. There, he led the campus gospel choir. He graduated with a B.A. degree in philosophy from Eastern in 1981. In 1985, Stevenson earned two advanced degrees from Harvard University: a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School and a M.A. degree in Public Policy (MPP) from the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

During law school, he took a class on race and poverty law. As part of this class, he worked for the Southern Center for Human Rights, an organization that helps people facing serious legal charges in the South. This experience showed Stevenson his true calling: to fight for justice and fairness for everyone.

Fighting for Justice: The Equal Justice Initiative

After graduating from Harvard in 1985, Stevenson moved to Atlanta and joined the Southern Center for Human Rights full-time. He was assigned to work in Alabama. In 1989, he was chosen to lead the Alabama office, which was a resource center that helped people facing serious legal penalties.

When the United States Congress stopped funding for this type of legal help, Stevenson started his own non-profit organization called the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery. In 1995, he received a special MacArthur Grant and used all the money to support EJI's work. He made sure that anyone in Alabama facing the most serious legal penalties would have legal help, especially since Alabama had a very high rate of such penalties and didn't always provide assistance.

Helping People Prove Their Innocence

One of EJI's first big cases was helping Walter McMillian. He had been wrongly accused and sentenced. Stevenson and his team worked hard to show that the original case against Mr. McMillian was flawed. Because of their efforts, Mr. McMillian was proven innocent and released in 1993.

Protecting Young People in the Justice System

Stevenson has been especially dedicated to making sure young people who commit crimes get fair treatment. He focuses on those under the age of 18. He helped achieve important U.S. Supreme Court decisions. In 2005, the Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that young people under 18 could not receive the death penalty.

EJI then started a campaign to review cases where convicted children were sentenced to life in prison without any chance of release. In Miller v. Alabama (2012), the U.S. Supreme Court made a landmark decision. They ruled that mandatory sentences of life without parole for children 17 and under were unconstitutional. This meant that judges had to consider a young person's age and potential for change. In 2016, the court ruled in Montgomery v. Louisiana that this decision had to be applied to older cases too. This potentially affected the sentences of 2,300 people nationwide who had been sentenced to life while still children, giving them a second chance.

As of 2022, the EJI has helped over 130 people avoid the death penalty. In addition, they have represented poor people, defended people on appeal, overturned wrongful convictions, and worked to reduce unfairness in the legal system. In recent years, Stevenson and EJI have also worked with other legal groups and law schools to provide more legal education and free legal help in the American South.

Remembering History and Building a Memorial

The EJI offices are located near the Alabama River, where enslaved people were once brought during the domestic slave trade. Nearby is Court Square, which was one of the largest slave auction sites in the country. Stevenson noticed that in downtown Montgomery, there were "dozens" of historical markers and monuments related to Confederate history, but nothing acknowledging the history of slavery. This history was the foundation of the South's wealth and a major cause of the Civil War.

He proposed to the state that three slavery sites should have historical markers and provided documentation. The Alabama Department of Archives and History initially hesitated due to "potential for controversy." Stevenson then worked with an African-American history group to sponsor this project. The group gained state approval for the three markers in 2013, and these have since been installed in Montgomery.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

Stevenson acquired six acres of land in Montgomery to develop a new project: the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. This memorial, which opened in April 2018, commemorates the nearly 4,400 people who suffered from racial violence in the South from 1877 to 1950. Stevenson believes that this history of violence is closely connected to the high rate of serious legal penalties in Alabama and other southern states today, and to how these penalties are unfairly applied to minority people. He argues that this history also influences the unfairness against minorities seen in the high rates of incarceration across the country.

The Legacy Museum

Associated with the Memorial is The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which also opened on April 26, 2018. This museum is located in a former slave warehouse. Its exhibits include materials on racial violence, racial segregation, and the high rates of incarceration since the late 20th century. Stevenson explains how the treatment of people of color in the legal system is related to the history of slavery and the later treatment of minorities in the South.

Author and Speaker

Stevenson wrote a critically acclaimed book called Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, published in 2014. It was chosen by Time magazine as one of the "10 Best Books of Nonfiction" for 2014 and was among The New York Times "100 Notable Books" for the year. It won the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction. A film based on the book, also called Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan as Stevenson, premiered on September 6, 2019, and was released in theaters on December 25, 2019. Stevenson himself was an executive producer for the film.

Stevenson is also a powerful public speaker. His speech at TED2012 in Long Beach, California, brought him a wide audience on the Internet. Following his presentation, attendees at the conference contributed more than $1 million to fund a campaign run by Stevenson. This campaign aimed to end the practice of placing young people convicted of crimes to serve sentences in adult jails and prisons. By April 2020, his talk had been viewed more than 6.5 million times. He has also been a commencement speaker at many universities and received numerous honorary degrees.

A School Named After Him

The Bryan Allen Stevenson School of Excellence (BASSE), a free public charter school in Georgetown, Delaware, was founded in August 2024. It was started by Alonna Berry, an educator and Stevenson's cousin. Stevenson supported the school with a $100,000 grant.

Awards and Recognition

Bryan Stevenson has received many important awards and honors for his work. These include the ACLU National Medal of Liberty in 1991, a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995, and the Olof Palme Prize in 2000. He also received the Gruber Prize for Justice in 2009 and the Four Freedoms Award in Freedom From Fear in 2011. In 2015, Time magazine named him one of the "100 Most Influential People."

He received the Benjamin Franklin Award from the American Philosophical Society in 2018. In 2020, he shared the Right Livelihood Award. He also received the National Humanities Medal in 2021. In 2024, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. In 2025, he received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Citizen Leadership.