Bryan Stevenson on Narrative, Courage, and Meeting This Moment
Phil sits down with Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, for a wide-ranging conversation on what this moment of backlash demands of individual and institutional donors. Stevenson places the current retreat from racial equity commitments within a much longer arc: the recurring pattern stretching from Reconstruction through Jim Crow to today, in which periods of racial justice progress in America are met by a deliberate counter-narrative, and progress stalls until a new narrative takes hold.
Drawing on his own personal history, Stevenson makes the case that philanthropy’s work on racial equity has too often been reactive rather than grounded in real historical learning, and argues that donors who invest in understanding this history will be far better positioned to fund effective, defensible strategies, from addressing the legacy of Black displacement during the Great Migration to reframing what accountability should have looked like after the Voting Rights Act passed. He also responds directly to donors who worry that a racial equity focus alienates potential allies, distinguishing the problems of poverty from the problems of racial bias while insisting the two shouldn’t be conflated.
Stevenson reflects on his years serving on the board of the Ford Foundation, and what he learned about the gap between funders and grantees, and why he believes that foundation boards need more representation from people with direct nonprofit experience.
Guest Info:
Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a nonprofit legal organization based in Montgomery, Alabama. As an attorney, he has won reversals, relief, or release for more than 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row, argued and won the 2019 Supreme Court ruling protecting condemned prisoners with dementia, and won the landmark 2012 ruling banning mandatory life without parole for children age 17 and under. He is the author of the memoir Just Mercy, adapted into a 2019 film in which he was portrayed by Michael B. Jordan, and has led EJI’s creation of the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, and Montgomery Square. He recently completed a term on the board of the Ford Foundation.
Credits:
Podcast Production: Cold Italian
Artwork: Jay Kustka
Resources:
Equal Justice Initiative
The Legacy Sites (Legacy Museum, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, Montgomery Square)
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee