Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is a non-profit law office and human rights organization based in Montgomery, Alabama founded and led by Bryan Stevenson. We provide legal assistance to condemned prisoners, children in the criminal justice system, people wrongly convicted or sentenced, and the poor and vulnerable facing imprisonment. We advocate for more hopeful solutions to the violence, powerlessness, and despair plaguing many marginalized communities.
EJI has also launched an initiative on race and poverty that seeks meaningful solutions to long-standing problems. This initiative aims to illustrate and facilitate engagement with America’s history of racial injustice and its ties to contemporary inequality and bias within the nation’s system of criminal law. EJI believes that understanding the truth of three key historical eras in American history – enslavement, followed by racial terror lynching, followed by violent and determined resistance to civil rights progress –is required to truly understand and combat the human rights challenges of our present day.
In addition to ongoing litigation work, EJI opened two new historical sites in Montgomery: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the nation’s first memorial to the victims of racial terror lynching, and The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. The formation of these sites and EJI’s narrative work have attracted millions of people to engage further with our mission towards justice.