Currently, the United States holds 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners (eji.org), which comes out to around 2.3 million inmates. 10,000 of these prisoners are children housed in adult facilities. 20,000 of these prisoners are wrongly convicted of crimes they did not commit (huff post). 356,000 are seriously mentally ill (treatment advocacy). One million of these convicts are African Americans (NAACP). These numbers are staggering, and difficult to fully comprehend. Bryan Stevenson is one of the few leaders who has dedicated his life to defending vulnerable populations in heinous legal situations. In Just Mercy, Stevenson recounts his experience on his most influential case defending Walter McMillian. Leadership is a learned skill. Bryan Stevenson’s childhood environment naturally educated Stevenson on the traits required to effectively lead. Bryan Stevenson was born on the tail end of 1950. His home was the small town of Milton, Delaware. Although Delaware was in the North, Stevenson experienced the segregation and racial bias of the South during his childhood. Stevenson’s continuing life experience with racial bias, combined with …show more content…
He understands that each case he works on makes an impact on personal lives and families of offenders. Furthermore, he understands the impact each case makes towards historical discrimination, inequality, and unfair treatment of those in poverty or vulnerable situations. Aside from his fight for justice, he also passionately fought memorializing lynching victims. He tallied all known lynching victims at over 4,000 and created a six-acre memorial for the victims. The lynching memorial in Montgomery is the first memorial of its kind. The incorporation of historical inequality into modern justice is an emphasis Stevenson focuses on to pursue guidance of fellow social justice