Bryan Stevenson says America can’t move forward without confronting an honest record of slavery, lynching, and racial terror—efforts he’s spent decades building into memorials and museums that have changed the story Montgomery, Alabama, tells itself.
In the 1980s, when Bryan Stevenson moved to Montgomery, Alabama, the city had dozens of Confederate monuments and memorials. What it didn’t have, he said, was anything that commemorated slavery.
Montgomery was one of America’s most prominent slave trading spaces before the Civil War. Yet, Stevenson’s early experience of the landscape was stark: memorials that honored the Confederacy sat in plain view, while the history of slavery remained largely unacknowledged.
A decade spanning years of organizing and building. Stevenson’s work with the Equal Justice Initiative has reshaped parts of the city. Over the last decade. the executive director has helped create the Legacy Sites—described as a series of museums and memorials that commemorate America’s dark history of lynching. slaveholding. and racial terror across the South.
Stevenson now speaks with a kind of insistence that feels less like optimism and more like a warning. “We have to now fight to correct the historic record. to have an honest accounting of what happened to our parents and grandparents and their parents. ” he said. “Because without an honest accounting, we will not make it to the next step.”.
He argues that the work is about more than changing monuments. It’s about changing what people are willing to see—and what they’re prepared to face—when the story of racial violence is finally put on display.
Stevenson said he is “really proud” that Montgomery has become a place that confronts slavery and lynching head-on. “I’m really proud that we have made Montgomery. Alabama. arguably the most truthful space in America when it comes to confronting the legacy of slavery and the legacy of lynching. ” he said. He added: “If we can lift up truth in the heart of Dixie. then there’s not a place in America that can say. ‘Well. they can do that there. but we can’t do it here.’”.
The argument lands with particular force as the nation debates how museums should remember. This week’s conversation with Stevenson comes as the Trump administration attempts to erase slavery and lynching from the nation’s museums, a move Stevenson sees as part of a wider struggle over memory.
For him, the fight over public history is not a short-term policy dispute. He frames today’s narrative struggle for racial justice as something that plays out across generations—something people must be prepared to defend, not just celebrate.
When Stevenson talks about correcting the historic record. he returns again and again to the same hinge point: without an honest accounting. the next step doesn’t arrive. For Montgomery, the change is visible—markers acknowledging slavery and memorial sites dedicated to lynching, slaveholding, and racial terror. For the rest of the country. he insists. the question is whether the truth will finally be allowed to stand in the open.
Bryan Stevenson Equal Justice Initiative Montgomery Alabama slavery legacy lynching Confederate monuments Legacy Sites racial justice museum history United States politics
So they just remove statues? Seems like that’s all politics now.
I don’t get why they keep digging up slavery stuff. Like it happened, move on. But I guess museums are better than nothing? idk
This article makes it sound like Montgomery only had Confederate monuments and zero history about slavery, which… is that even real? My grandpa said people talked about it in church, so I feel like they’re rewriting the whole thing. Also “lynching” museums just make it feel like guilt tourism.
I mean, if he’s building memorials, cool. But I bet half the town still doesn’t visit them anyway. Feels like they’re trying to “correct” the record by force, and then people get mad and act like it’s censorship. Funny how folks will argue about monuments but won’t argue about the actual history. Either way, Montgomery being “truthful” is a bold claim.