Urban Consulate: An Evening with Bryan Stevenson

Join Urban Consulate at The Garden Theater in Detroit for An Evening with Bryan Stevenson hosted by Orlando P. Bailey. This live conversation is part of the series made possible thanks to support from The Kresge Foundation. Free & open to the public. All ages welcome.

• Doors open 4:30pm; Program begins 5pm
• Tickets available online only. Advance registration required.
• This is a live event only; no livestream.
• Book sales by Source Booksellers

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults.

Mr. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the United States Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-imprisonment-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from Pr*son for over 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced.

Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge inequality in America. He led the creation of EJI’s highly acclaimed Legacy Sites, including the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. These new national landmark institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias.

Mr. Stevenson’s work has won him numerous awards including the prestigious MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Prize; the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize, and the National Humanities Medal. He has received over 50 honorary doctoral degrees, including degrees from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Oxford University. He is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller, , which was named by Time Magazine as one of the 10 Best Books of Nonfiction for 2014 and has been awarded several honors, including the American Library Association’s Carnegie Medal for best nonfiction book of 2015 and a 2015 NAACP Image Award. Just Mercy was adapted as a major motion picture and the film won the American Bar Association’s 2020 Silver Gavel Award as well as four NAACP Image Awards. Mr. Stevenson is also the subject of the Emmy Award-winning HBO documentary . He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government.

ABOUT THE HOSTS

brings people together to share ideas for building more just and equitable communities. We believe that sharing space for honest dialogue and the exchange of knowledge is necessary to transform ourselves, our communities, and our world. To learn more, visit UrbanConsulate.com.

is a private, national foundation that works to expand equity and opportunities in America's cities through grantmaking and social investing in arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services and community development, nationally and in Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans and Fresno. To learn more, visit Kresge.org.

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