Dear John,

Tomorrow is Juneteenth — a day that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. In 1865 — two months after the Civil War actually ended — Union soldiers finally reached Galveston, Texas, to announce that the war was over and all enslaved people were now free. Though they arrived nearly two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the news still had not reached Texas, where hundreds of thousands of people continued to be enslaved. But on June 19, 1865, the last remaining enslaved people in the former Confederacy were declared free.

Shortly after, the 13th Amendment was ratified, which formally abolished slavery, except for one key exception: The United States still allowed slavery “as punishment for crime.” In addition to this explicit exception, the intersection of “convict leasing” practices, targeted law enforcement, and Jim Crow laws established that the criminal legal system was a tool used to ensure uncompensated or minimally compensated Black labor. These practices helped to shape the criminal legal system that we have today. The legacy of slavery is very much alive and contributes to the disproportionate representation of Black people in our carceral system.

At the Innocence Project, we fight to free innocent people from prison, but we also work every single day to transform this system — and if we really want to change it from the ground up, our work must be rooted in anti-racism.

It’s not easy, but I know we can accomplish anything together. That’s why I’m reaching out to you today. We’re trying to hit a big 1,000-donor goal before the end of this month. Can you help us get there?

It’s no secret that racism has been deeply entrenched in our country’s criminal legal system since day one — and you can see it play out in the numbers. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, more than half of the 3,528 people who were exonerated between 1989 and 2023 are Black, despite Black people only making up 13.6% of the U.S. population. A 2022 report from the registry found that innocent Black people were seven and a half times more likely to be wrongly convicted of murder than innocent white people.

But these disparities don’t start in the courtroom. Police practices such as racial profiling, deception in interrogations, threats to witnesses and the accused, and tainted witness identification are all drivers of racial disparities. The cases of Black people exonerated from murder convictions are 50% more likely to involve police misconduct than those of their white counterparts.

It’s clear that disproportionate and unjust treatment leads to the wrongful conviction of Black people.

Here at the Innocence Project, we’re working every single day to build a more just and equitable system for ALL of us — but we need your support. Please, consider making a donation before the deadline.

Thank you for everything,

Ngozi Ndulue
Special Advisor on Race and Wrongful Conviction
Innocence Project