This month we will celebrate another Juneteenth and a year of wonderful achievements at EJI. Our hunger program has now supported 6,000 families in Alabama struggling with food insecurity and provided low-cost food to hundreds more families through our mobile grocery store. We are now offering expanded health services with new physicians who will allow us to serve and support more people who are uninsured, recovering from years of incarceration, or burdened by poverty. 
 

Our legal staff is fighting hard each day in an increasingly hostile and complicated legal environment. We are committed to delivering the highest quality legal assistance to our clients despite opposition to our work. We were able to win relief for several clients on death row in the last 12 months, and we played a direct role in securing commutations for 37 people on federal death row last December. We have highlighted the continuing crisis in Alabama’s prisons and are still advocating in court to improve the tragic and too often deadly conditions that harm so many incarcerated people in Alabama. Our documentation and detailing of prison violence and mismanagement are essential to advancing reform. I am proud of the extensive work we have done to win parole for clients in Alabama, as well as the re-entry assistance and support we have provided to dozens of clients who have been released from prison.  

I am excited about the educational work we are doing through our project with Montgomery Public Schools, where we are providing courses in every public high school, along with a seminar for staff and faculty, and a student scholarship program. We have now awarded $10,000 scholarships to nearly 100 Montgomery public high school graduates. We are hosting hundreds of students and teachers from around the country through our traveling Legacy Scholars Initiative. Each week our staff make presentations to groups, students, community organizations, religious institutions, and corporate leaders who visit our sites. Our convenings have brought a wide cross-section of leaders, activists, students, and educators to Montgomery and our sites. We have advanced our community remembrance work with new markers detailing racial terror lynchings in multiple states, along with soil collections and community public education events that are critical in this time of misguided opposition to education about history.  
 

Our sites continue to receive international acclaim as some of the finest cultural institutions in America. The Legacy Sites have become vital institutions for educating the nation about the history of racial injustice and they provide an urgent and absolutely essential response to book banning and censorship. We have hosted over half a million visitors since last Juneteenth, and the feedback from visitors has been extraordinary and deeply affirming. The work we do to educate the nation about racial justice through our calendar, reports, and news articles will be more vital than ever over the next couple of years. 
 

In September, we will open Elevation Convening Center & Hotel, a transformative space for reflection, education, and connection in downtown Montgomery, alongside our newest Legacy Site, Montgomery Square. The Square will detail the Montgomery decade between 1955 and 1965 and the civil rights struggle that changed the world, and add another important space to visit for people who come to our sites.  
 

All of the work we do at EJI is a product of the commitment of our supporters.  As we prepare to host thousands of visitors at our upcoming Juneteenth events, I want to take this moment to thank you for your unwavering support of our mission.