Civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson rarely slows down, friends and family say. It seems he's always looking over details on death penalty cases from his Montgomery, Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative. If he's not speaking on the criminalization of black men, Stevenson is researching another historical site connected to an episode of racial violence.
But a new HBO documentary on Stevenson attempts to get him to sit, speak and explain why he believes the legacy of lynchings of African Americans in the U.S. is directly linked to those who have wrongly been put on death row. In his mind, racial structures of oppression have remained in the U.S. judicial system since the Jim Crow-era and the death penalty is merely their direct descendant.
"Most people don't know about our history of lynching," Stevenson told The Associated Press in a phone interview shortly after receiving news Friday that the Supreme Court had overturned the death sentence for Curtis Flowers , a Mississippi black man. "People have never been required to talk about it. But when you sit and think about it, the correlation is there."
FILE - This April 3, 2015 file photo shows attorney Bryan Stevenson, left, leaving Jefferson County jail in Birmingham, Ala., with Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent nearly 30 years on Alabama's death row for the 1985 slaying of two fast-food managers. In the documentary, “True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality,” airing Wednesday on HBO, Hinton talks about sitting on death row. (AP Photo Hal Yeager, File)
Stevenson said the white lynch mob transformed into a formal judicial process in which often white prosecutors, white judges and largely white juries are tasked with deciding if a poor, black male accused of a crime is sentenced to death.
"True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality," set to air Wednesday on HBO, shows how the Harvard-trained attorney is now dedicating his life to forcing the U.S. to face the violence experienced by its communities of color.
The Delaware-born Stevenson gained national attention in 1993 after he helped exonerate Walter McMillian, a 46-year-old black pulpwood worker on death row. McMillian had been sentenced to death for the 1986 fatal shooting of an 18-year-old white woman in an Alabama town where Harper Lee wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird." But Stevenson was able to prove that a key witness had lied and prosecutors withheld important evidence.
The attorney then helped exonerate Anthony Ray Hinton in 2015, an African American man who spent 30 years on death row in Alabama after he was convicted for the 1985 slaying of two fast-food managers. Stevenson was able to show that experts could prove Hinton's mother's gun, the one prosecutor said was using in the killings, couldn't have been the one used in the shooting.
In the documentary, Hinton talks about sitting on death row and being forced to smell the burning flesh of other inmates in the electric chair as a jail guard taunted him.
The film comes as the country prepares to mark the 100th anniversary of "Red Summer" — a period in 1919 when white mobs attacked and murdered African Americans in dozens of cities across the U.S. Hundreds of African Americans, some still in their World War I uniforms, were lynched, tortured and forced from homes amid heightened racial tensions and the rise of the revived Ku Klux Klan.
It also comes as Latino academics and activists with the group Refusing to Forget are working to educate the public on violence committed by white mobs and the Texas Rangers that claimed thousands of people of Mexican descent in the American Southwest from 1910 to 1920.
Stevenson said he hopes the documentary helps other communities of color think about how they can memorialize historical sites connect to their unique past. But he said African Americans have a distinct history connected to slavery and that should not be ignored.
"This kind of lawlessness affected all kinds of communities of color," Stevenson said. "But it's not the same. Lynching starts with enslavement. Black people didn't come here as immigrants."
"True Justice" will be available on HBO NOW, HBO GO, and other streaming platforms.
Russell Contreras is a member of The Associated Press' race and ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/russcontreras .
WASHINGTON (AP) — Israel this week briefed Biden administration officials on a plan to evacuate Palestinian civilians ahead of a potential operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah aimed at rooting out Hamas militants, according to U.S. officials familiar with the talks.
The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and requested anonymity to speak about the sensitive exchange, said that the plan detailed by the Israelis did not change the U.S. administration’s view that moving forward with an operation in Rafah would put too many innocent Palestinian civilians at risk.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to carry out a military operation in Rafah despite warnings from President Joe Biden and other western officials that doing so would result in more civilian deaths and worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis.
The Biden administration has said there could be consequences for Israel should it move forward with the operation without a credible plan to safeguard civilians.
“Absent such a plan, we can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah because the damage it would do is beyond what’s acceptable,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said late Friday at the Sedona Forum, an event in Arizona hosted by the McCain Institute.
Some 1.5 million Palestinians have sheltered in the southern Gaza city as the territory has been ravaged by the war that began on Oct. 7 after Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages.
The United Nations humanitarian aid agency on Friday said that hundreds of thousands of people would be “at imminent risk of death” if Israel moves forward with the Rafah assault. The border city is a critical entry point for humanitarian aid and is filled with displaced Palestinians, many in densely packed tent camps.
The officials added that the evacuation plan that the Israelis briefed was not finalized and both sides agreed to keep discussing the matter.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday that no “comprehensive” plan for a potential Rafah operation has been revealed by the Israelis to the White House. The operation, however, has been discussed during recent calls between Biden and Netanyahu as well as during recent virtual talks with top Israeli and U.S. national security officials.
“We want to make sure that those conversations continue because it is important to protect those Palestinian lives — those innocent lives,” Jean-Pierre said.
The revelation of Israel's continued push to carry out a Rafah operation came as CIA director William Burns arrived Friday in Egypt, where negotiators are trying to seal a cease-fire accord between Israel and Hamas.
Hamas is considering the latest proposal for a cease-fire and hostage release put forward by U.S., Egyptian and Qatari mediators, who are looking to avert the Rafah operation.
They have publicly pressed Hamas to accept the terms of the deal that would lead to an extended cease-fire and an exchange of Israeli hostages taken captive on Oct. 7 and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Hamas has said it will send a delegation to Cairo in the coming days for further discussions on the offer, though it has not specified when.
Israel, and its allies, have sought to increase pressure on Hamas on the hostage negotiation. Signaling that Israel continues to move forward with its planning for a Rafah operation could be a tactic to nudge the militants to finalize the deal.
Netanyahu said earlier this week that Israeli forces would enter Rafah, which Israel says is Hamas’ last stronghold, regardless of whether a truce-for-hostages deal is struck. His comments appeared to be meant to appease his nationalist governing partners, and it was not clear whether they would have any bearing on any emerging deal with Hamas.
Blinken visited the region, including Israel, this week and called the latest proposal “extraordinarily generous” and said “the time to act is now.”
In Arizona on Friday, Blinken repeated remarks he made earlier this week that "the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a cease-fire is Hamas.”
The Chahine family prepares to bury two adults and five boys and girls under the age of 16 after an overnight Israeli strike in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, May 3, 2024. An Israeli strike on the city of Rafah on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip killed several people, including children, hospital officials said Friday. (AP Photo/Ismael Abu Dayyah)
FILE - Palestinians line up for free food during the ongoing Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip in Rafah, Jan. 9, 2024. A top U.N. official said Friday, May 3, 2024, that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine" after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali, File)
Palestinians rescue a woman survived after the Israeli bombardment on a residential building of Abu Alenan family in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, early Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Ismael Abu Dayyah)
President Joe Biden walks across the South Lawn of the White House as he talks with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Washington, after returning from a trip to North Carolina. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
