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Report on EJI Activity2022
Thank YouWe are enormously grateful to everyone who has supported the work of EJI over the last year. As basic civil and human rights have come under attack in unexpected and unprecedented ways, we are working harder than ever to challenge bigotry, inequality, injustice, excessive punishment, and over-incarceration in America. Throughout the year, we have provided direct legal services to hundreds of people who have been condemned to execution, wrongly convicted, or unfairly sentenced. We are actively documenting and challenging horrific conditions of confinement in jails and prisons. We have also increased and greatly expanded our public education eorts and brought hundreds of thousands of people to our sites, which confront our nation’s history of racial injustice and the legacy of slavery. In 2022, we also embarked on an exciting new initiative that focuses on poverty. In recent years we have seen growing income inequality, which has had tragic consequences for the poor. The pandemic revealed how many vulnerable people in America die needlessly, suer from unjust treatment, and experience severe deprivation that cannot be reconciled with a nation as wealthy as the United States. Our new Anti-Poverty Initiative seeks to confront three components of poverty: food insecurity, inadequate healthcare, and unjust incarceration of the poor for unpaid fees and fines. With your support, we believe we can create and model new kinds of interventions that make a dierence in the lives of the most needy people in our nation. New reports that educate the public, new meeting spaces to facilitate important conversations about race, and court victories that secure freedom and relief for people in prison are all part of what we celebrate this year even as there is so much injustice that requires our attention. Everything we do is possible because of your generous support and your commitment to the issues we address. We are grateful that you stand with us, and we are happy to provide a brief report on our work. Thank you.Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director
Addressing Poverty in America
many people struggling with food insecurity live in rural parts of the state—where there are often fewer programs available but even higher rates of poverty and hun g er—EJ I ’s hun g er r elie f program provides families in need with financial assistance for groceries and essential items like cleaning supplies and diapers. So far, we have worked directly with nearly 300 families, many of whom have small children or relatives needing additional care.This year, the pandemic and inflation resulted in even greater income inequality and stress for people living in poverty in the U.S. To help address this, in Sep-tember 2022, EJI launched three new programs aimed at reducing poverty in America. The first anti-poverty project focuses on hunger relief. Alabama has one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the country, so we are starting here. Because Hunger Relief
other families with special needs. EJI has also partnered with anti-hunger org ani zations, lo cal community groups, food banks, and local ministries across the state to strengthen their capacity to provide food and assistance to thousands of families in need. Doretha Heard, with Helping Hands Food Ministry, which works to combat food insecurity in Macon County, Alabama, stressed the impact that the last few years Our hunger relief program is currently active in most counties across Alabama, and we aim to expand the project in the next year. In order to provide direct and immediate assistance, EJI sta have traveled across the state to personally meet those in our program. We are incredibly grateful to have been able to supp ort single parents and gr and p a re nts rai s i ng s m all children, elderly people and people in poor health, and many
We look forward to expanding and continuing to learn from our “Since the pandemic, we have struggled to keep up with the demand for food while facing challenges with transportation, refrigeration, extreme weather conditions and volunteer support.” hunger relief program in the new year, and EJI is hopeful that this direct assistance model can help inspire new ways of addressing food insecurity across the country. “In a nation as wealthy as our nation, it is fundamentally un-acceptable that there are millions of people who are dealing with hunger and food insecurity,” said EJI Director Bryan Stevenson. “Hunger is not an issue that we have to accept in America.”have had on her community:
Health CarePeople with low income and people formerly incarcerated often face serious health issues related to poverty, trauma, and ina d e qua t e s e rvic e s . Th e i r increased need for health care is aggravated by less access to basic services and health re-sources. States like Alabama have refused to expand Medicaid, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without health insurance. Since the onset of the pandemic, death rates in poor communities have been dramatically higher than the national average. EJI is committed to addressing this crisis. Our Anti-Poverty Initiative includes a major new project focused on health care. We are thrilled to have hired a team of physicians, nurses, and Thousands of people are released from prisons each year with chronic health issues, trauma, addiction disorders, and no health insurance. In many cases, these individuals have no place to go to receive care. New EJI health team members Dr. Margaret Hayden, Meghan Hunter, Laquarria Nevins, H. Mawande Mzongwana, Siphosihle Mzongwana, and Dr. Sanjay Kishore.
other health professionals who are working to build a health center and a mobile clinic that will allow us to oer free health screenings and care to thousands of people in Alabama. Our initial focus is on people recently released from prison where violence, poor health care, and trauma have made the formerly incarcerated vulnerable to chronic diseases and acute illness. Unjust Fees and FinesIn December of this year, police arrested an 82-year-old woman in Valley, Alabama, for her failure to pay a $77 trash bill. She was handcued, jailed, and needlessly humiliated. Thousands of poor p e o p l e h a v e f a c e d s i m ila r situations; local authorities throughout Alabama continue to jail people who cannot aord to pay fines and fees—despite the constitutional prohibition against putting people in jail because they are poor. In 2023, EJI will begin helping people manage unjust fees and fines for misdemeanors and traic oenses. We believe that, by removing the threat of arrest and imprisonment that menaces people who are unable to pay court fees and fines, we can directly reduce recidivism, keep thousands of people from going to jail, and help low-income people manage limited resources more eectively. Our project on fees and fines is an eort to reduce the impact the carceral system is having on communities and provide desperately needed help to the poor who are unfairly targeted by overly harsh and punitive local governments.
Advocating on Behalf of the Most Vulnerable Art by Kenneth Smith, who survived an execution attempt on Alabama's death row in November 2022.
EJI currently represents dozens of condemned prisoners on death row. We have won relief, reduced sentences, and obtained freedom for scores of people wrongly convicted or sentenced to death since our founding. We are committed to ending the use of the death penalty, which has proved to be a costly, tragic, and unjust practice that has made the United States an outlier on human rights. In November 2022, after the state of Alabama carried out two failed e x e c u t i o n a t t e m p t s a n d a torturous multi-hour execution of a third person, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey announced the state would be suspending executions as the Alabama Department of Corrections conducts a “top-to-bottom” review of its protocols. Suspension of Alabama Executions
The suspension is a welcome and huge relief to many of us who fight against executions. What has happened during executions in Alabama is unconscionable, unnecessary, and completely avoidable. State oicials have surrounded executions with secrecy and have been dismissive of concerns and obligations which come with the great responsibility to engage in lethal punishment. Our work on behalf of con-demned men and women in Alabama remained vital this year as the state sought to carry out numerous executions despite uncertainty and unreliability surrounding Alabama’s protocols and procedures. EJI attorneys continue to advocate on behalf of the incarcerated poor in state and federal courts. This year, EJI client Joshua Russell was spared execution and removed from death row. He was initially sentenced to death for a crime that occurred in 2011. EJI represented Mr. Russell on appeal, challenged the consti-tutionality of his conviction and death sentence, and won him a new sentencing trial. In Sep-tember 2022, at the conclusion of his new trial, Mr. Russell was sentenced to life without parole and no longer faces a risk of execution.
EJI continues to challengetheex-cessive punishment of chil-dren who have been prosecuted as adults and condemned to die in prison or given extreme sentences. We are representing people in multiple states who have been unfairly sentenced. This year marked the 10-year anniversary of Miller v. Alabama, EJI’s landmark victory before the Supreme Court that struck down m a n d a t o ry d e a t h- in -p ri so n sentences for children. Thousands of children who were automatically condemned to die in prison for juvenile oenses have been resentenced because of Miller v. Alabama—and in the decade since the decision, more than 880 people sentenced as children to die in prison have been released. Since EJI’s work on behalf of children sentenced to die in prison began, 25 states have banned such sentences for juveniles. Today, we continue to advocate on behalf of children prosecuted as adults, including providing formerly incarcerated people with job training, edu-cation, housing, and assistance with other support services upon release. Children in Adult Prisons
Former EJI client Donald Brown, who was incarcerated for 43 years. Mr. Brown now works on the EJI team. EJI won Ian Manuel's release after he was condemned to life imprisonment at the age of 13. In 2021, Mr. Manuel published a memoir titled My Time Will Come. EJI Senior Attorneys Angie Setzer (left), Tatiana Bertsch (middle right), and Sia Sanneh (far right) along with former EJI client Talmadge Hayes. Mr. Hayes was sentenced to die in prison as a child but was released after three decades of imprisonment.
This year we cont inued t o ch a l l en g e u n co n s t i t u t i o n a l conditions in Alabama jails and prisons, which are the most violent in the country. Understaing, systemic class-ification failures, and oicial misconduct and corruption have left thousands of incarcerated individuals across the st ate vulnerable to abuse, assaults, and uncontrolled violence. At least 18 people were killed in Alabama’s prisons this year alone, making 2022 the deadliest year in the Alabama Department of Corrections’s history. In Novem-ber of this year, a long-serving Prison Conditions
correctional oicer resigned and called on federal authorities to intervene in the state’s prison crisis, which he said is putting incarcerated people, oicers, and the public at risk. EJI continues to investigate and document the inhumane condi-tions in Alabama’s prisons, particularly as the state has announced plans to build new prisons.
Advancing RacialJustice ThroughPublic Educationand Advocacy
Critical Acclaim for the Museum and Memorial“[O]ne of the most powerful and eective new memorials created in a generation." - The Washington Post“There is nothing like it in the country." - The New York Times“One of the most impressive exhibits—and one of the most significant memorials—to be found anywhere on the planet. It simply doesn’t get better than this.” - Architect Magazine“As a Southerner and an American. . . I consider this to be one of the great memorials of the world and a must-do experience for every woman, man and child." - Walter Magazine“Themost moving experience that we had while in Montgomery. I did not see a single person leave the museum without tears rolling down their cheeks.” - Berger Bungalow
mu seu m o ered “th e m ost comprehensive story imaginable about the Black experience in America.” He added: Since opening last fall, EJI’s new Legacy Museum—which provides a comprehensive history of the United States with a focus on the legacy of slavery—has attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors as well as international attention and acclaim. The new museum has been featured on MSNBC's The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart, NPR's All Things Con-sidered, CBS Sunday Morning, and the Vox Conversations podcast. We are proud to have expanded the art gallery in the Legacy Museum this year with new major works from some of the most celebrated Black artists in the world, including Glenn Ligon, Elizabeth Catlett, Simone Leigh, Gordon Parks, Jacob Lawrence, Faith Ringgold, and Winfred Rembert. Tony Norman, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Gazette, said the “Every element at the Legacy Museum is connected to what comes before and after, creating a seamless narrative argument about the truth of race in America.”Museum and Memorial
In April 2022, EJI also expanded the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The new exhibit, Community Reckoning, features a sculpture by artist Branly Cadet that represents thousands of people around the country engaged in community remem-brance work, as well as steel duplicates of 75 marker mon-uments. The new wing at the National Memorial dramatizes the work of local citizens helping their communities remember and reckon with history. The marker m o n u m e n t s d e t ai l s p e ci fic narratives about lynching violence and recognize communities around the country who have memorialized these local histories as part of EJI’s Community Remembrance Project. We are incredibly grateful to the thousands of visitors who have come to our sites in Montgomery, Alabama, over the past year to engage truthfully with our history of racial injustice, and we look forward to hosting many more people in the next year.
Racial Justice EducationWe were thrilled to publish a new report on the Transatlantic Slave Trade this year, which examines the period between 1501 and 1867 when nearly 13 million African people were kidnapped and traicked across the Atlantic Ocean to be enslaved, abused, and forever separated from their homes, families, and cultures. The report examines the economic legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and how American port cities from New England to New Orleans were shaped by slavery—a h i s t o r y t h a t f e w h a v e acknowledged. We hope the report and its accompanying videos will initiate more honest conversations about the history of slavery in America and how we can eectively address its legacy.
In April, EJI invited hundreds of healthcare providers from across the country to come visit the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, and reflect on how our history of racial injustice continues to influence health inequities for poor and margin-alized communities today. Given the extraordinary work that healthcare workers have done in the last two years to respond to Covid-19 and the health crisis we are still managing, we were honored to host this convening. In November, EJI also hosted an E d u c a t i o n S u m m i t , w h i c h brought together nearly 200 teachers, heads of schools, college deans and presidents, and education leaders from across the U.S. Attendees were able to visit our sites in Montgomery before joining small-group discussions Bryan Stevenson speaks to guests at our Health Convening.
focused on improving education about our nation's history of racial injustice. In November, we released the 2023 History of Racial Injustice calendar, the 12th edition of our award-winning calendar that documents historical events related to our history of racial injustice and its legacy. Hundreds of thousands of people have engaged with the content in our 2022 calendar over the past year and we have already distributed thousands of the 2023 calendar. Education convening participants gather in EJI's new Legacy Hall.
Criminal Justice EducationAnthony Ray Hinton’s critically-acclaimed memoir, The Sun Does Shine, was adapted for young readers this year. An Oprah’s Book Club pick, The Sun Does Shine has been lauded by critics as an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Mr. H i n t on sp en t 3 0 ye a rs on Alabama’s Death Row for a crime he did not commit before EJI won his release in 2015. Now, Mr. Hinton continues to work at EJI as a Community Educator, and is as a tireless and powerful advocate for abolition of the death penalty. EJI sta have also presented our w o r k t o h u n d r e d s o f o r g -anizations, communities, and decision makers both nationally and internationally, advancing the Anthony Ray Hinton spent nearly 30 years on Alabama's death row for a crime he did not commit.
discussion on criminal justice in America. And as we continue to call for the abolition of the death penalty, this year we also educated legislators and policymakers across the country about America’s flawed, unreliable, and arbitrary system of capital punishment.
Engaging Communities in Truth-Telling
Since 2015, EJI’s Community R e m e m b ra n c e Pr o j e c t h a s engaged local communities across the nation in a campaign to recognize the victims of racial terror lynchings. This year, hu n d re d s mo re com m uni t y members joined us in acknow-ledging their counties’ history of racial violence by collecting soil from lynching sites and erecting historical markers.“We think it’s important that truth and justice work become local and that every community that has witnessed the horror of lynching reckons with that history through memorialization.”- EJI Director Bryan Stevenson
The first historical marker of the year was dedicated in January 2 02 2 in G w i nn e tt Co un t y, Georgia, and since then nearly a dozen other communities have unveiled new markers memorial-izing victims of lynchings. A new marker on the OSU-Tulsa campus commemorating the 1906 founding of the Greenwood District was among those un-veiled this past year. EJI partnered wi th t he Terenc e Cru t ch er Foundation, Oklahoma State University at Tulsa, and the Tulsa C o m m u n i t y R e m e m b r a n c e Coalition to dedicate the marker during a weeklong series of e v e n t s h o n o r i n g Te r e n c e Crutcher, who was killed by a police oicer during a traic stop in north Tulsa six years ago. Dr. Tiany Crutcher, Terence’s twin
sister and founder of the Terence Crutcher Foundation, said at the unveiling: “We bear witness to the past. We honor the power of the present. And we vow to not betray the future. We shall not forget.”We look forward to continuing our CRP work and fostering dialogue in more communities across the nation in the coming year.
Creating Spaces for Learning and Reflection
In September of this year, we opened the Legacy Plaza in Montgomery, a 2.5-acre outdoor park designed to serve as a gathering space where visitors can reflect on their experience at the museum and memorial. Designed to preserve the sanctity of the experience at the museum, the park is filled with landscaping and artwork, including a piece by local artist Kevin King, who said: “I'm thankful that I can have a piece of artwork in this sacred space representing these civil rights heroes.”The plaza also includes a café with food from local chefs so that groups and families can share meals together at picnic tables set up throughout the park. To help facilitate educational experiences for larger groups, EJI also opened several new meeting and event spaces in downtown Montgomery this year, which can be reserved in advance and accommodate groups of up to 150 people.A sculpture in EJI’s new Legacy Plaza.
EJI continues to receive a perfect score of 100 and a four out of four-star rating from Charity Navigator and an A+ grade from Charity Watch. In addition, EJI has earned a score of 99 out of 100 on WalletHub, and was named best charity for social advocacy in its list of best charities for 2023. We are grateful to each of you for supporting our work in 2022. We are committed to continuing the fight for justice. With your help, we will keep working to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and racial injustice.Recognition for EJI’s Work
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