Hannah Kuhnhausen

English 2610
Salt Lake Community College
September 22, 2018

Analysis of Just Mercy and Other Works by Bryan Stevenson

As a writer, lawyer, and public speaker, Bryan Stevenson is bringing awareness to racial

inequality, social justice, and history in our nation that has been hidden under the rug. Just Mercy

is his memoir of being a champion for wrongly accused death row inmates and children who

were sentence to life in prison without parole. His TedTalk, We Need to Talk About an Injustice,

discusses the mass incarceration and the unexamined history of slavery in America. The podcast,

The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done, features Stevenson speaking about his work with the Equal

Justice Initiative and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Through these works,

Stevenson is creating a counternarrative about race and the way we have looked at in the past.

In his memoir, Stevenson discusses his personal experience as a young black lawyer

living in Atlanta and what lead him to pursue a career working to free wrongly accused prisoners

on death row. He describes experiences such as being harassed by police officers outside his own

home, writing “I tried to stay calm; it was the first time in my life anyone had ever pointed a gun

at me.” (Stevenson 40) He goes on to explain the irony of the situation, a young lawyer fighting

against criminal injustice being targeted for a crime due to racial profiling. Stevenson uses these

personal experiences to acknowledge his base for claims that we still live in a society that is

unjust and unequal, no matter what the rule of law states.

Stevenson’s choice to work himself into poverty with the Southern Prisoners Defense

Committee (now the Southern Center for Human Rights), although he had degrees from
prestigious universities and could have easily secured himself in wealth, shows his commitment

to social justice. Through this work there, he was turned on to the case of Walter McMillian,

who’s story is one of the focuses of the novel. Stevenson uses the details of McMillian’s absurd

trial, conviction, and sentencing to detail the hegemonic racism in our country. He writes about

the way the community and lawyers involved in the original case systematically chose McMillen

as their scapegoat for a violent murder of Vickie Pittman, a trend Stevenson shows occurred

throughout the south and still today. Stevenson’s journey to prove McMillen’s innocence is

written in a way that engages the reader but also forces them to see the binary opposition that

occurs in these cases: black against white, insiders against outsiders. As Stevenson reveals more

details about his journey to find the truth in the McMillian case, the base and super structure of

our justice system are highlighted. The hoops Stevenson must jump through are telling of our

biased justice system, “I was furious that the State would try to prolong any order granting relief

to Walter. It was consistent with everything that had happened over the last six years, but it was

still maddening.” (Stevenson 218)

Stevenson, born just five years after Brown vs Board of Education (Rob Warden), grew

up within the confines of the Jim Crow era. He experienced racial segregation, and his family

suffered years of oppression, slavery, and injustice. In his TedTalk, Stevenson attributes his

grandmother to shaping his identity. Her parents were born into slavery, and she experienced the

height of Jim Crow in America. In this talk, Stevenson brings light to the surprising statistics

involving people of color in our criminal justice system. “One out of three black men between

the ages of 18 and 30 is in jail, in prison, on probation or parole.” (Stevenson 5:40) By

discussing these staggering statistics, Stevenson is trying to show the factual but surprising truth

about the racial injustice of our society today. He goes on to say, “Our system isn't just being
shaped in these ways that seem to be distorting around race, they're also distorted by poverty. We

have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than if

you're poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes.” (Stevenson 6:23) Through

Marxism, we can see that Stevenson is showing the inequality of criminal justice, with people of

color being the subaltern. This is also evidence of a base and superstructure, being that the

criminal justice system is an institution that reinforces the gap between rich and poor.

The podcast, The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done, includes Stevenson’s thoughts on the

history of racial injustice in America. He begins by discussing things we all know exist, the rule

of law in regards to race such as Brown vs Board of Education. He uses this to contrast other

Supreme Court cases that did not have a ruling that is as recognized, or even favorable to

equality. “The Court just continued to shrug its shoulders and it was a sort of a gradual

awareness that we were going to have to change the environment outside the courts. And that's

when we decided that we were going to have to talk more honestly about the history of racial

inequality that I think has made us indifferent.” (Stevenson) He goes on to explain the false

narrative surrounding the treatment of slaves, and other justifications by those who benefit from

power in order to explain the inequalities that people are still experiencing today. Stevenson

explains how recognizing the past, speaking about it and learning from it, will help us recover as

a society. “I think we've actually created a narrative that those things weren't that bad and not

only do we not need to recover from that, we don't even need to be remorseful about that. There

is no shame...We’re more than a slave society. We’re more than a lynching society. We’re more

than a segregation society. But we cannot ignore that bad thing we did.” (Stevenson)

In his attempt to reframe the way we discuss race, inequalities, and our history as a

nation, Stevenson is able to give a voice to a community that has been historically silenced. He is
creating a counternarrative as a highly educated black man that we must do better to confront our

past, while committing to the rule of law and equality for all. He uses statistics, powerful word

choice, and storytelling to exemplify modern slavery, being that of our criminal justice system.

Stevenson’s writing and speaking not only give a voice to those who have experience injustice,

but also draw attention to the ways our society still marginalizes black people.
Works Cited
Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy. Penguin Random House, 2014.
Stevenson, Bryan. "We Need to Talk About an Injustice" TED, March 2012. Lecture.
Alana Cassanova-Burgess. "The Worst Thing We've Ever Done." Audio blog post. On The
Media. WNYC Studios, June 1 2018. https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/on-the-media-2018-06-
01?tab=summary
McWilliams, James. “Bryan Stevenson on What Well-Meaning White People Need to Know
About Race.” Pacific Standard, Pacific Standard, 6 Feb. 2018, psmag.com/magazine/bryan-
stevenson-ps-interview.
Toobin, Jeffrey. “The Legacy of Lynching, on Death Row.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker,
19 June 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/22/bryan-stevenson-and-the-legacy-of-
lynching.
Warden, Rob. “On Behalf of Wronged Defendants.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 23
Oct. 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-just-mercy-a-story-of-justice-and-
redemption-by-bryan-stevenson/2014/10/23/5d590580-3f67-11e4-9587-
5dafd96295f0_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ef5e3f782ec1.
“Equal Justice Initiative.” Equal Justice Initiative, 21 Sept. 2018, eji.org/