Bryan Stevenson says facing our racist past is a path, not punishment

This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. In his second term, President Trump has been trying to erase parts of American history that he considers corrosive ideology or disparaging to other Americans alive or dead. He ordered the Secretary of the Interior to take down sculptures, markers, and displays in federally funded places like the national parks. So down came references to slavery, Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, and other forms of racism, brutality, and inequity. At the same time, my guest Brian Stevenson has been doing the opposite.

He was opening an exhibition on the history of the civil rights movement and the violence and degradation faced by black people that led to the movement. The exhibit begins in nineteen fifty five, with the boycott of Montgomery's segregated buses and ends ten years later with the marches from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights. The third of those marches, the one that was successfully completed, arrived at its destination, Montgomery Square, 61 years ago today. Montgomery Square is both the location and the name of the new exhibit.

It's part of the Legacy sites, which includes sites and public places in Montgomery about slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow, as well as the Legacy Museum. The larger intent is truth and reconciliation by facing the past. The project was founded and is led by Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. A nonprofit legal organization founded with the mission of representing children and adults unfairly convicted, unfairly sentenced, subjected to brutality in prison or facing execution. He has argued six cases before the Supreme Court.

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