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One of my long time American heroes is Bryan Stevenson

Archbishop Desmond Tutu described this African-American lawyer fighting for racial justice as “America’s young Nelson Mandela.” I have followed his work since 1992 when I started studying the criminal justice system, prison system and law enforcement in America. With all my film projects I extensively research and study the history, and I had just begun to work on my film Voices from Inside (blog entry Sept 4). Back then, people and the media did not talk much about “prison” – amazing how taboo it was, criminals were supposedly just criminals.

I kept reading up on Bryan Stevenson as much as I could. In 1989 he founded The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Alabama, and I was so moved by his work on saving African American innocent men from death row. After World War Two, the death penalty has been considered in Western Europe a barbaric relic of totalitarianism. As of 2019, the EJI organization has prevented more than 125 people from receiving the death penalty.

Fortunately, Bryan Stevenson’s fame and acclaim has been steadily and quickly on the rise since his 2014 memoir Just Mercy which became a bestseller. He has been able to expand his work and influence into the most beautiful, astonishing and moving remembrance projects I know of: The Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, In Montgomery, Alabama. They are about the history and legacy of Slavery, and the Racial Lynching Terror. Both places are educational memorials, which actively involve communities and institutions in unique ways. They are about researching, truth-telling, remembering, and healing, and they inspire reflection, action and change.

When Just Mercy came out, I gifted it to several people, including to Brandyn Costa, one of the young Black protagonists of my film Finding the Gold Within. (See entries Aug 3 & 27 and Sept 25.) Brandyn was studying law, and I kept telling him about Bryan’s work and these monuments. This summer, just after getting his degree and passing the bar, and before starting his work at a law firm in Akron, Ohio, Brandyn made a pilgrimage to The Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. When he later told me on the phone about his trip there with his girlfriend, and voiced his gratitude to me, I was deeply touched.

Recently I realized that remembering and justice have been central themes in all my work, and my small Garage Memorial project is just another manifestation – in the form of a “Truth-Telling Wall.” I hope to make my pilgrimage to Bryan Stevenson’s Museum and Memorial some day in the not-so-distant future. Here are a few stills that Brandyn took and kindly shared with me. (And I will post more in the coming days…)



(Photos by Brandyn Costa)

The Equal Justice Initiative documented more than 4,000 racial terror lynchings in twelve Southern states between Reconstruction and World War II, in one of the most comprehensive investigations to date. This work recognized the need for a memorial space that embraces this truth. EJI’s Lynching in America Report


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