We work to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and racial injustice. Led by Bryan Stevenson. Creators of @legacysites.eji.org
Equal Justice Initiative
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On this day in 1954, Southern state officials met in Virginia and organized resistance to the Supreme Court's recent decision in Brown v. Board of Education striking down school segregation.
Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Drayton Nabers Jr. on how a commutation of Jeffery Lee's death sentence would display "fidelity to the conservative principles of limited government, respect for the jury system, and the rule of law."
On this day in 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer was arrested and beaten in Winona, Mississippi, while returning from a voter education workshop in South Carolina.
On this day in 1958, St. Petersburg, Florida, ordered the closure of a public indoor swimming pool because a Black 19-year-old named David Isom used the facility.
On this day in 1966, James Meredith was shot on the second day of his 220-mile "March Against Fear" to encourage Black voter registration and defy white supremacy across the South.
On this day in 1920, the Ku Klux Klan hired publicists to grow membership for the white supremacist organization. Within 16 months, nearly 100,000 new members had joined, and by 1924, there were three million active members nationwide.
The State of Alabama has scheduled the execution of Jeffery Lee by nitrogen suffocation for June 11, even though his capital jury voted against the death penalty and chose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.
On this day in 1910, a white mob in Orange, Texas, killed two Black men as they walked home from a festival. Days prior white mobs terrorized Black residents after a jury failed to reach a verdict in the trial of a Black man accused of killing a white man.
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Terry Pitchford, a Black man sentenced to death in Mississippi after a prosecutor with a track record of racial discrimination struck all but one Black person from his jury.
Equal Justice Initiative
After James Meredith was shot during his 220-mile "March Against Fear" civil rights marchers continued the journey to Memphis, Tennessee in solidarity with him.
