EJI founder Bryan Stevenson talks about what lies ahead
The Equal Justice Initiative’s new Freedom Monument Sculpture Park has made the New York Times’ list of top travel destinations for 2024, and it isn’t even open yet. Only 52 places in the world are on this list. Action 8’s Estee Morrison sat down with EJI’s Bryan Stevenson to talk about the new Freedom Monument Sculpture Park that is under construction, as well as several ways the organization is combating poverty in our area.
Looking back at 2023, Equal Justice Initiative founder and executive director Bryan Stevenson says he is most excited by two new anti-poverty programs they started last year.
“Our hunger initiative helping families that are struggling with food insecurity really went unbelievably well. I had hoped that we could reach a lot of people/families and we ended up supporting 2,000 families & it has just been amazing to see the impact it has had. So many people end up with food insecurities because of illness & they can no longer work or because an adult child dies who had children and now the grandmothers become caregivers to grandchildren they didn’t expect & they don’t have the resources to provide food. All of these calamities can create a crisis that no one anticipated,” Stevenson said.
Struggling families are given a monthly grocery card worth $415 for about six months to help them get back on their feet. “People can recover they prepare themselves to move forward and that’s just been a really wonderful thing to see and we’re committed to extending it this year,” Stevenson said. Another new initiative provides free healthcare screenings to people when they are released from jails and prisons. “To help people improve their chance of not going back to prison is a really important thing. Having represented people in prisons for so long, we spend so much time visiting our clients in jails and prisons, that when they come out, we want to keep them out and we know that healthcare is an essential component of that,” Stevenson said.
The 17 acre Freedom Monument Sculpture Park is under construction on a bluff above the Alabama River, and once it is completed this spring, visitors to The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum will have an additional place to walk through history. “It is boxed in by rail lines and of course those rail lines were built by enslaved people. Rail/trains were the primary way people were brought to this region enslaved. The river was also a place that had a lot of trafficking and so it has a lot of historical authenticity and power, and to add to that dwellings from plantations, rail cars, holding pens – things that will allow visitors to have a much more concrete understanding about this history. I can’t think of any place that mixes art and history in the way that we are hoping to mix them here, so I think it’s going to be a really compelling place for people to visit, and it will extend the time visitors are in Alabama, which is always positive for other businesses. Yes, so I am really excited about it,” Stevenson said. There will be a special monument that is 43 feet tall in the new park, and it will represent the 4 million enslaved people who were emancipated at the end of the Civil War. The new park is expected to open sometime this spring.
