Bryan Stevenson – American lawyer, human rights activist, author of a number of scientific legal publications. Dedicated a career to helping the poor, convicts and prisoners. Made a huge contribution to the recognition of the most severe violations of the rights of African Americans in the history of the United States, making efforts to improve conditions for prison inmates.

Biography of Bryan Stevenson. Childhood and early years

Bryan was born on November 15, 1959 in the small town of Milton, located in the south of the US state of Delaware. The father of the future human rights activist, Howard Carlton Stevenson Sr., worked as a technician in the laboratory of a plant processing plant, and his mother, Alice Gertrude, worked as an accountant at the Dover Air Force Base. It was the mother who instilled in her son a craving for knowledge, as she emphasized the importance of education in the modern world. The Stevenson family attended the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where the boy learned to play the piano and also sang in the choir.

When Brian was sixteen, his maternal grandfather was brutally murdered during a robbery. The killers went to jail with a life sentence and Stevenson later said that he considered the punishment fair.

As a child, the boy witnessed a policy of racial segregation (it was formally banned, but still flourished). He spent his first years in a “colored” school. African-American children played separately from whites, they and their parents entered the doctor’s office through the back door, and whites through the front. Brian’s dad got used to the situation, but mom reasonably noted that it shouldn’t be like that.

The young man graduated from high school in 1977 and enrolled in a free form of study with a scholarship at Eastern University in St. Davids (Pennsylvania). On campus, he led the local student gospel choir. In 1981, Stevenson graduated from the university and continued his studies at Harvard Law School. There he received a doctorate in law and found a calling in life.

Professional activity

After graduating from Harvard High School, Brian moved to Atlanta, Georgia, taking a job at the Southern Center for Human Rights. He was assigned to Alabama, Stevenson became the head of the organization for the protection of the death penalty, which was funded by the state.

After the removal of state funding by Congress, the human rights activist reformed the center and created the Equal Justice Initiative (EII) in Montgomery. The structure guaranteed legal protection for every person on death row, since Alabama was the only state where such protection was not written into the law. Stevenson was concerned about the application of overly harsh criminal sanctions against minors. The PRI has been involved in relevant cases and has secured improvements from the US Supreme Court. Over the period of its activity, the Initiative saved more than 125 people from the death penalty.

Thanks to Stevenson, in 2018, the “National Memorial of Peace and Justice” was opened in Alabama, dedicated to honoring the memory of more than 4,000 people who were lynched in the southern States from the 1870s to 1950. The lawyer is deeply convinced that the situation with public out-of-court lynchings has led to an increased number of death sentences and their disproportionate application against national minorities.

The lawyer has received many awards for his work in the field of reforming the penitentiary system. In 2000, he was awarded the Prize. Olof Palme, also received the Roosevelt Institute’s Four Freedoms Award in 2011.

Сelebrity personal life

Nothing is known about Stevenson’s personal life at the moment. In a 1995 interview with People, the then obscure lawyer reported not being romantically involved due to work:

“It’s hard to do what I do, to be married and have children.”

It is known that the human rights activist has a nephew (Bryan G. Stevenson, Instagram yanville), who greatly appreciates and respects his uncle.

A film about lawyer Bryan Stevenson – “Just Mercy”

In general, Bryan is a non-public person, the main thing for him is to do his job professionally and help people. For a while, there wasn’t even a nameplate on his office door. The situation changed dramatically after the announcement of the movie “Just Mercy”, where the role of a lawyer was played by actor Michael Bakary Jordan (not to be confused with basketball player Michael Jeffrey Jordan). The screenplay was based on Stevenson’s autobiography”Just Mercy”: A Story of Justice and Redemption.

Bryan Stevenson now

The initiative created by the hero of this article is conquering new horizons. Representatives of the PRI are very pleased that the film dedicated to their activities will be seen by people in most countries of the world. Brian himself rated the picture positively, but a couple of phrases were unpleasant for him, incl. the words of another lawyer “If you dig into these wounds, you will make a lot of people very angry.”