“We have to now fight to correct the historic record, to have an honest accounting of what happened to our parents and grandparents and their parents,” says Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. “Because without an honest accounting, we will not make it to the next step.”Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post/Getty
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When Bryan Stevenson moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1980s, the city—one of America’s most prominent slave trading spaces before the Civil War—had dozens of Confederate monuments and memorials, but nothing commemorating slavery. Today, thanks to Stevenson’s efforts, the city looks much different.
Over the last decade, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative has transformed parts of Montgomery through markers acknowledging the legacy of slavery while also building the Legacy Sites, a series of museums and memorials that commemorate America’s dark history of lynching, slaveholding, and racial terror across the South.
“I’m really proud that we have made Montgomery, Alabama, arguably the most truthful space in America when it comes to confronting the legacy of slavery and the legacy of lynching,” Stevenson says. “If we can lift up truth in the heart of Dixie, then there’s not a place in America that can say, ‘Well, they can do that there, but we can’t do it here.’”
On this week’s More To The Story, Stevenson talks about the importance of memorializing America’s full history as the Trump administration attempts to erase slavery and lynching from the nation’s museums and why he sees today’s narrative struggle for racial justice as a generational battle.
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