President Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian Museum for being too “woke” in its exhibits are part of a broader effort to control America’s story. Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, has created institutions that confront the nation’s painful past to preserve an honest vision of history. In this conversation with Jeffrey Toobin, he argues that while America has much to celebrate, whitewashing its history lets its mistakes — and their consequences — live on.
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The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Jeffrey Toobin: I’m Jeffrey Toobin, a contributing writer for New York Times Opinion. I’m a former assistant United States attorney, and I write about the intersection of law and politics. Since January, like everyone, I’ve been trying to figure out what the Trump years mean for America, in particular about civil rights and the criminal justice system. And I thought, who better to talk to than Bryan Stevenson?
Bryan is the founder and leader of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala. He’s also, especially in recent years, the creator of these extraordinary cultural institutions in Montgomery that he calls the Legacy Sites. There is a museum on the history of African American life in the United States; there’s a memorial to the victims of lynching and there’s a sculpture garden.
I visited them for the first time this summer, and I was struck by how the vision of American history that Bryan and his institutions present is precisely the vision of America that Donald Trump is trying to get away from, and I wanted to talk about that conflict with Bryan today.
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The post What Germany Did That America Still Hasn’t appeared first on New York Times.
