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Bryan Stevenson

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“The Caring Hand,” by Eva Oertli and Beat Huber, sculpture of a hand holding a tree.

Bryan Stevenson Reclaims the Monument, in the Heart of the Deep South

The civil-rights attorney has created a sculpture park, indicting the city of Montgomery—a former capital of the domestic slave trade.
The Legacy Museum shows visitors elements of America’s long history of racial injustice – slavery, lynching, segregation, police killings of Black teens and the societal addiction to putting Black people behind bars. Photograph: Courtesy of Equal Justice Initiative/Human Pictures

‘Truth-Telling Has to Happen’: The Museum of America’s Racist History

The Legacy Museum lands at a time when racial violence is on the rise and critical race theory is used to prevent America’s racist past being taught in schools.

Hanged, Burned, Shot, Drowned, Beaten

In a region where symbols of the Confederacy are ubiquitous, an unprecedented memorial takes shape.
Protestors standing against the death penalty.

An Exercise in Political Imagination: Debating William F. Buckley

Stephen Bright and Bryan Stevenson defended the abolition of capital punishment at a moment when political support for that movement reached its nadir.
A jar of soil from the burial site of Howard Cooper, dated 1885.

Now We Know Their Names

In Maryland, a memorial for two lynching victims reveals how America is grappling with its history of racial terror.

Bringing a Dark Chapter to Light: Maryland Confronts Its Lynching Legacy

While lynching is most closely associated with former Confederate states, hundreds were committed elsewhere in the country.

In the Hate of Dixie

Cynthia Tucker returns to her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama – also the hometown of Harper Lee, and the site of 17 lynchings.

Lynching in America

A new digital exhibit confronts the legacy of racial terror.

The Tragic, Forgotten History of Black Military Veterans

The susceptibility of black ex-soldiers to extrajudicial murder and assault has long been recognized by historians.
Gaineswood Plantation mansion.

Plantation Tourism Continues to Raise Questions

One plantation tourist manager said covering slavery would be like “trying to tell the story at Disneyland of how poorly the employees at Disney are treated.”
FBI agents and local police examine a bombed out pickup truck in Natchez, Mississippi.

The History of Violent Opposition to Black Political Participation

Leaders in the 20th-century South faced violence and death for promoting voting rights; systemic failure enabled their killers to go unpunished.
Supreme Court building.
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Supreme Court Opinions Don't Have to Be the Final Word

The Supreme Court doesn't have the last word; the people do. How attorneys pushed back on the flawed 1987 McCleskey decision.
A historical marker outside Fendall Hall, a plantation.

Historical Markers Are Everywhere In America. Some Get History Wrong.

The nation's historical markers delight, distort and, sometimes, just get the story wrong.
In the preface to a new book version of the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter and the leading force behind the endeavor, recalls that it began as a “simple pitch.”

The 1619 Project and the Demands of Public History

The ambitious Times endeavor reveals the difficulties that greet a journalistic project when it aspires to shift a founding narrative of the past.
Artistic rendering of a sheet of newspaper with people crossed out, flowing above people working menial jobs whose heads are also crossed out, working next to signs that read "Sorry."

On Atonement

News outlets have apologized for past racism. That should only be the start.

How to Confront a Racist National History

Susan Neiman, a philosopher who studies Germany’s confrontation with its Nazi past, examines how the United States can remember slavery and segregation.
Gordon Park's photograph of law enforcement officers kicking in a door

When Crime Photography Started to See Color

Six decades ago, Gordon Parks, Life magazine’s first black photographer, revolutionized what a crime photo could look like.

Race, History, and Memories of a Virginia Girlhood

A historian looks back at the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in her home state.

The View from Cottage Hill

History bleeds in Montgomery, Alabama.

As Goes the South, So Goes the Nation

History haunts, but Alabama changes.