At the end of every school year, the Summer Book Committee, made up of students and teachers, convenes to choose the upper school’s summer reading book. Summer of 2021’s choice was Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Stevenson narrates this brilliant and heart-wrenching memoir of his experiences as an attorney working in the Alabama criminal justice system, where he co-founded the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). There are also two related film versions of Just Mercy: a documentary recounting the stories contained in the book and a movie adaption loosely based on Stevenson’s book.
The book follows his experiences working with death row inmates under the age of eighteen, many of whom have been unjustly convicted of crimes. Stevenson worked with men like Walter McMillian, who was accused of a crime with only circumstantial evidence to incriminate him. Stevenson writes in the book, “There was no evidence against McMillian-no evidence except that he was an African American man involved in an adulterous interracial affair, which meant he was reckless and possibly dangerous, even if he had no prior criminal history and a good reputation. Maybe that was evidence enough.”
Stevenson points out the evident racism and inequality that McMillian faced. He raises constitutional issues in the cases of adolescents, many of whom have been sentenced to life imprisonment. Stevenson argues that it was cruel and unusual to sentence a child before their brains fully developed and were not yet capable of making rational decisions. He simultaneously tells these stories while detailing the unjust, intensely harsh, and immoral conditions that Black men face when incarcerated for minor violations. His story presents a truth that is so often overlooked in American police departments and the criminal justice system.
Stevenson reflected on his career in his memoir when he wrote, “My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice. I’ve come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.”