Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapter 13-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

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Discussion Questions

Background

Cultural Context: Jim Crow and the Justice System

One central argument of Just Mercy is that the US justice system is inherently flawed, built on a foundation of racist laws and practices that have led to unprecedented levels of injustice and cruelty. Possibly the most impactful of these foundational flaws is the Jim Crow era, which stretched from the end of Reconstruction in 1867 through the civil rights period of the 1960s.

Jim Crow was a system of “legalized racial segregation and suppression” (247), which included the refusal of basic human rights, disenfranchisement, and marginalization. This era gave rise to the concept of “separate but equal” segregation, upheld in the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson. The Supreme Court ruled that laws based on race were not inherently discriminatory, a ruling that was upheld until a series of cases challenged it, starting with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case.

Jim Crow also reinforced the anti-miscegenation laws that had already existed in some states since the colonial period. These laws made interracial marriage illegal in much of the South. The term miscegenation, from the Latin for “to mix” and “race/kind” (“Miscegenation.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary), came into popular use during the Civil War, when “supporters of slavery coined the term to promote the fear of interracial sex and marriage and the race mixing that would result if slavery was abolished” (25). These laws remained in place until the 1967 Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case finally ruled them unconstitutional.

A third element of the Jim Crow era was the use of lynching, a practice in which mobs publicly executed Black men, usually by hanging, on the pretext of justice, but without a trial or any legal context. Lynching was a weapon used to terrorize and control the Black population following the abolishment of slavery.

While Jim Crow laws and practices are now officially illegal, the era’s legacy persists in the form of racial injustice throughout the legal system, including in extreme drug laws and laws designed to attack the poor and Black communities, and in the racial bias of policing practices, jury selection, sentencing, and the application of the death penalty.

Social Context: Equal Justice Initiative

Bryan Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in 1989, after the government severely reduced the funding for the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. Stevenson converted the center into a nonprofit legal center and moved the operation to Montgomery, Alabama. The EJI promised to defend anyone sentenced to the death penalty in Alabama. Stevenson made this promise for two reasons: first, because Alabama had the highest per capita rate of death penalties in the US (231), and second, because Alabama was, in 1989, the only state in the US with no public-defender system to provide legal assistance to those on death row (19).

Soon after opening, the EJI expanded its mission to aid people convicted of crimes as children, who were serving sentences of life without parole or similarly harsh punishments, as well as incarcerated people with disabilities. Just Mercy covers some of the cases the EJI worked on in its early years, including the case of Walter McMillian, and the landmark Supreme Court cases that eventually ruled life-without-parole sentences for children under the age of 17 cruel and unconstitutional.

Since the publication of Just Mercy in 2014, the EJI has once again expanded its scope. In addition to providing legal aid to incarcerated people, it also helps those released from prison to reintegrate into society by helping with employment, housing, and counseling. It also works with communities across the country that are marginalized by poverty, racial prejudice, and disenfranchisement. The EJI attempts to bring awareness to and “chang[e] the narrative about race in America” (“About EJI.” Equal Justice Initiative). In this capacity, the EJI produces research, articles, reports, and short films about the country’s “history of racial injustice” (“About EJI”).

In 2018, the EJI opened two new venues. The first is the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, a museum dedicated to the history of racial prejudice, injustice, and violence in the United States, located in Montgomery, Alabama. The second is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, also in Montgomery, which is a memorial for the approximately 4,400 Black people who were murdered by lynching from 1877 through 1950.