My mind is in a flux. Before meeting Bryan Stevenson, America’s best-known death row lawyer and, some argue, its most effective social activist, I have been cramming homework. I rose at dawn to devote the morning to Stevenson’s Legacy Museum in downtown Montgomery. The exhibit’s journey, which takes you from the Atlantic slave trade to Jim Crow segregation, ending with today’s era of incarceration, will stick with me for a long time. To many among the droves that come from far farther afield than Alabama, it gives a crash course in an American history they barely knew. Few museums can top this for impact.
我心绪翻涌。在见到布莱恩•史蒂文森(Bryan Stevenson)——美国最知名的死囚辩护律师，也有人认为是美国最有成效的社会活动家——之前，我一直在恶补功课。我黎明即起，把整个上午都花在他位于蒙哥马利市中心的传承博物馆(Legacy Museum)里。展览带领参观者一路走过从大西洋奴隶贸易，到“吉姆•克劳”种族隔离制度，再到今日大规模监禁时代的历史脉络，这段旅程会让我久久难忘。对许多远道而来、甚至来自亚拉巴马州以外很远地方的参观者而言，这里像是一堂美国历史速成课——而那段历史他们原本几乎一无所知。很少有博物馆能在冲击力上超过它。