bryan stevenson
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Just Mercy: 'Bryan Stevenson's Impact Has Been Felt, Even If You Don't Know Him Just Yet'
In 1988, lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson sought to give voice to Walter McMillian, a man wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of a white woman. In 2020, Just Mercy will give a new voice to their story. In an exclusive clip obtained by The Root to honor Global Human Rights Day, some of the cast…
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Urbanworld 2019: We Came, We Saw, We Covered
The Urbanworld Film Festival is a space for black cinematic excellence. For five days (from Sept. 18-22), Urbanworld showed New York City and the world why the festival is in its 23rd year (The Root was a media sponsor of the festival). On Wednesday, Harriet, a film directed by Kasi Lemmons, opened the festival with…
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Watch: Jamie Foxx Says, ‘You’re Guilty From the Moment You’re Born’ to Michael B. Jordan in Just Mercy Trailer
In a system that is supposed to presume us all innocent until proven guilty, why is it that for black people, sometimes the goal is “just mercy?” Just Mercy will tell the story of one of many black people wrongfully convicted. From the press release’s synopsis: Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther, Creed, Creed II) and…
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Nothing but the Truth: A Q&A With Bryan Stevenson, Subject of HBO’s True Justice
Montgomery, Alabama, exists as a paradox. It is here that slavers sold other human beings at market, and where a young Rosa Parks set off a campaign that eventually desegregated a nation. In Montgomery, in the shadow of the state capitol building, there is a haggard monument to Robert E. Lee sitting directly across the…
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The One Place Colorblindness Will Benefit Black People: America’s Courtrooms. The Supreme Court Should Take Note
Black people usually recoil when we hear a white person say, “I don’t see color,” and with good reason. It usually denotes a form of racial denialism, at best, and a subtle, yet clear implication that there is something wrong with race, and specifically, something wrong with being black. But there is one venue that…
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If We’ve Ever Needed the LDF Before, We Sure Do Need Them Now
To attend the LDF’s 32nd annual National Equal Justice Awards Dinner themed: “Justice. Equality. Democracy,” is to swell with a sense of pride in the organized, brilliant pushback of our people in courts all over the land; it’s to know that two black women (Sherrilyn Ifill and Janai Nelson) are at the helm of this…
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Harvard Honors Colin Kaepernick, Others With W.E.B. Du Bois Medal: ‘Love Is at the Root of Our Resistance’
Alas, to be a fly on the wall at Memorial Hall at Harvard University Thursday afternoon. The room’s very air would be perfumed with the sweet scent of black liberation and excellence as eight prominent, distinguished, and mostly freedom fighting African Americans received the University’s prestigious W.E.B. Du Bois Medal from the Hutchins Center for…
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Lowndes County, Ala.: The Place God Forgot
“It seems like everybody forgot about Lowndes County … even God.”
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The New Lynching Memorial and Legacy Museum Force Us to Bear Witness to Our Whole American Truth
It’s time to take this story to the masses.It’s time to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.May the other side of his-story now be entered into the record, the narrative, the myth of these United States of America. Forever and ever. Amen. “We love talking about 19th-century history and not…
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Happy Confederate Day! On Lynching Memorials and Winning the Narrative War
On Monday, Alabama is set to observe Confederate Memorial Day, commemorating the sons of the South killed in the Civil War. No surprise there. Alabama loves fighting with Mississippi for the title of “most racist state” (though they actually may be running neck and neck with “everything south of the Canadian border,” if we’re keeping…