Google awards Bryan Stevenson $1 million grant

Milton native Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, recently accepted a $1 million Google grant to further his efforts to overcome injustice and change the narrative of race.

"We are literally trying to change the landscape of criminal justice," Stevenson said at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., on receiving the award. For Stevenson, the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.

The grant will be used to improve technology, increase the organization's visibility and further its mission of establishing equal justice for all people, he said.

Stevenson founded the initiative in 1989 after he was worked in poor and minority communities, especially in the South, where he listened to people in poverty who did not receive justice.

Growing up in Milton during the Civil Rights Era, Stevenson told the gathering at Google he attended segregated schools. He said he wasn't sure he would be able to attend high school until attorneys fought to integrate them.

A 1977 Cape graduate, Stevenson served as student body president and earned a scholarship to Eastern University. Upon graduation, he received another scholarship to attend Harvard Law School.

While in law school, Stevenson said he represented death-row inmates at the Southern Center for Human Rights for a course on race and poverty litigation. Inspired to fight for justice in poor and minority communities, Stevenson said he found his calling.

"There are more innocent people in jails and prisons than there ever has been before," he said. "People don’t value the victimization of the poor, and you have to value everyone’s victimization the same."

Stevenson advocated for change, saying people who want change must do uncomfortable things: Get closer to the places where poverty, hopelessness and injustice persist, he said, for those are the places where where change is possible.

"In 1972, there were 300,000 people in prison; today, there are 3.2 million," Stevenson said. "The bureau of justice now expects one in three black male babies is expected to go to jail or prison in his lifetime.

"That wasn't true in the 20th or 19th centuries but has become true in the 21st century...With Google's support, we are going to change the narrative."

For more information about the Equal Justice Initiative and Bryan Stevenson, go to www.eji.org.