PIRATE READ
Incoming students to read acclaimed memoir about social justice
Incoming East Carolina University students will explore complex themes of racial injustice before even stepping foot into a classroom with this year’s Pirate Read selection.
Bryan Stevenson’s memoir “Just Mercy” was chosen as required reading before classes begin Aug. 22.
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is the 2016 Pirate Read selection.
The themes of the book relate to societal issues such as criminal justice, impact of famous literature (“To Kill a Mockingbird”), social justice, police misconduct in the U.S. and children in the prison system, said Dr. Mary Beth Corbin, executive director of the ECU Office of Student Transitions.
“We hope that incoming students as well as faculty will read the book and be able to have campus conversations about these themes,” she said.
The narrative focuses on the case of Walter McMillian, an African-American man who was convicted of murdering a young white woman in 1986. The murder took place in Monroeville, Alabama, which is the hometown of “To Kill a Mockingbird” author Harper Lee. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, McMillian was sentenced to death.
Although McMillian was ultimately pardoned from death row in 1993, Stevenson’s book highlights the underlying issues of systemic racial injustice in the South and features several cases involving wrongful charges.
The New York Times wrote that even though some of the cases in “Just Mercy” occurred more than 30 years ago, Stevenson engages the reader in a way that allows for insight, reflection and possibly a call to action.
The introduction states that “this book is about getting closer to mass incarceration and extreme punishment in America. It is about how easily we condemn people in this country and the injustice we create when we allow fear, anger, and distance to shape the way we treat the most vulnerable among us.”
During Stevenson’s legal career, he worked for the exoneration of innocent people and argued cases on five different occasions in front of the Supreme Court.
Bryan Stevenson (Photo credit: Nina Subin)
Stevenson grew up in Delaware, and his great-grandparents had been slaves in Virginia. When he was a teenager, his grandfather was murdered during a robbery. After attending college and Harvard Law School, Stevenson moved to the South to start a legal career, defending those who had been wronged by the justice system due to their racial background. He went on to found the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Alabama.
Stevenson will visit ECU in November.
“Just Mercy” was named by Time Magazine as one of the “10 Best Books of Nonfiction” for 2014. The book also received the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award. The book is a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize and the Kirkus Reviews Prize and is an American Library Association Notable Book.
This is the ninth year of the Pirate Read program. Books from previous years include “The Other Wes Moore,” ”It Happened on the Way to War” and “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.”