The most popular and widely discussed of these is Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Just Mercy is one of many books published in recent years that explore the social and historical roots of mass incarceration. He has traveled throughout the country and around the world to speak about the American criminal justice system, prison justice, the death penalty, and racial and economic equality. With the support of EJI, Stevenson has blocked the executions of over 100 death row inmates. Alabama, in which the Court banned life sentences for juvenile offenders. Stevenson has argued before the Supreme Court in several cases, including in the high profile 2012 case Miller vs. For decades, EJI has defended inmates on death row, challenged inhumane prison conditions, and fought for improvement of the juvenile justice system. To meet growing demand for legal aid to death row inmates in Alabama, Stevenson and his friend Eva Ansley moved to Montgomery to start the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in 1989. In 1985, he moved to Atlanta to work for the SPDC. While interning one summer at the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (Now the Southern Center for Human Rights) he developed a passion for prison justice and for fighting against the death penalty. Stevenson majored in philosophy at Eastern University and he went onto study at Harvard Law in a joint program with the Kennedy School of Public Policy.

His family were members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where he sang and played piano and his mother directed the choir. Stevenson’s father worked in a processing plant and his mother worked a civilian job at an air force base. His grandmother, with whom he was very close, was the daughter of slaves in Virginia. Stevenson grew up in a rural community in Delaware.

Just mercy book sparknotes