Alabama has racist past but potential for more just society, Southern Voices headliner says

Alabama is a state with a deeply racist past in a country with unfairness in its justice system, but there is potential to create a more just society, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative told an audience at the Hoover Public Library Friday night.

The United States has the highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world, said Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer who was the headline speaker for the 2019 Southern Voices Festival at the library.

The jail and prison population in the United States has risen from less than 200,000 in 1972 to 2.2 million today, said Stevenson, who has won legal challenges against what he considers excessive and unfair sentencing practices and has confronted abuse of incarcerated and mentally ill prisoners.

Seventy million Americans have had criminal arrests that keep them from getting jobs or being able to vote, he said.

Based on statistics, one in three male black babies and one in six male Latino babies are expected to go to prison, Stevenson said. That leaves communities with people who are struggling and surrounded by despair, he said.

But there are solutions, Stevenson said. People need to get closer to others who are suffering — the poor, neglected and marginalized, he said. When we do that, we affirm their humanity and give witness to their struggle, he said.

Society also needs to change the narratives that lie underneath the issues we debate, such as immigration and public safety, he said.

Stevenson said the United States years ago launched a misguided war on drugs, saying that drug-addicted people are criminals instead of people who have a health problem. That has put hundreds of thousands of people in prison, he said.

Also, criminologists have declared that some children are not really children but super-predators who deserve to be treated like adults, Stevenson said. Thirteen states have no minimum age for charging children who commit crimes as if they were adults, he said, and that has relegated thousands of children to life in prison.

People also must fight against the narrative that one race is superior to another or somehow more dangerous than another, he said. He referenced the Thanksgiving night shooting at the Riverchase Galleria, where a Hoover police officer shot and killed a black man with a gun in his hand in the mall immediately after another shooting took place.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall decided charges were not merited against the Hoover police officer, but some people protesting the police shooting have claimed Emantic “E.J.” Bradford was deemed a danger because he was black.

Stevenson said he wants his children to live in a world where they are not perceived to be dangerous due to the color of their skin.

Stevenson also encouraged the 250 people in Friday night’s crowd to stay hopeful because there are things about Alabama that are beautiful and people who are creative and imaginative and want to do the right thing.

People also have to be willing to do things that are uncomfortable and inconvenient, just because they are the right things to do, he said.

Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato was in the audience tonight and said Stevenson’s comments were very thought-provoking. “He really explained racism in America and how deep-seated it was and still is,” Brocato said.

Brocato said one of his biggest takeaways from the speech was the idea that to make change happen, people have to be willing to get close to other people so they can understand their perspective.

It’s uncomfortable to talk about racism, but Hoover officials want to engage in productive talks with the community so the city can come out better on the other side, he said.

It was great to have Stevenson in Hoover as the city is going through difficult racial tension related to the mall shooting, Brocato said.

“I see people from all across the political spectrum here tonight,” he said. “I think that’s important. We all have to hear these things if we want to be part of the change.”

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin also was in the audience and said this was the kind of talk that all Americans need to hear, regardless of their race, gender or socioeconomic status.

One thing that Woodfin said struck a chord with him was Stevenson’s comment that the opposite of poverty is not wealth, but justice. Woodfin also said he appreciated the comments that Alabama will not be judged so much by its technology, natural resources or the number of auto manufacturers it has, but by how it treats the poor, neglected and marginalized.

Cara McClure, a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement in Alabama and a leader in the protests of the Hoover police shooting at the Galleria in November, said she was encouraged to see Brocato, Woodfin and some Hoover City Council members attending Stevenson’s talk.

Lance Owens, a white Birmingham resident in the audience, said he thought Stevenson’s talk was fantastic. The idea about getting close to people from different walks of life resonated with him because he and his wife, Rachel, purposefully did that by moving from higher-income neighborhoods in Birmingham and Montgomery to Birmingham’s East Lake community about five years ago.

They were looking for clarity on how to be better neighbors and people who give hope to others, he said.

“We want to raise our family in an area where people don’t look like us and come from different walks of life,” he said. “I think we learn from it, rather than putting ourselves in a cocoon or bubble with people just like us.”

Polly McClure, the statewide coordinator of the Reach Out and Read Alabama program run by the Alabama chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said Stevenson’s remarks about getting close to other people were encouraging to her and others involved in nonprofit work.  “Those words are what we try to do every day,” she said.

The 2019 Southern Voices Festival continues Saturday with an authors conference featuring Melanie Benjamin, Sean Deitrich, J.T. Ellison, Patti Callahan Henry, Roger Johns, David Joy, Gin Phillips and Lori Roy. The conference is sold out. See more about those authors here.