A Perilous Path: Talking Race, Inequality, and the Law

A frank and enlightening discussion on race and the law in America today, from some of our leading legal minds—including the bestselling author of Just Mercy

This blisteringly candid discussion of the American racial dilemma in the age of Black Lives Matter brings together the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the former attorney general of the United States, a bestselling author and death penalty lawyer, and a star professor for an honest conversation the country desperately needs to hear.

Drawing on their collective decades of work on civil rights issues as well as personal histories of rising from poverty and oppression, these titans of the legal profession discuss the importance of working for justice in an unjust time.

Covering topics as varied as “the commonality of pain,” “when ‘public’ became a dirty word,” and the concept of an “equality dividend” that is due to people of color for helping America brand itself internationally as a country of diversity and acceptance, Sherrilyn Ifill, Loretta Lynch, Bryan Stevenson, and Anthony C. Thompson engage in a deeply thought-provoking discussion on the law’s role in both creating and solving our most pressing racial quandaries. A Perilous Path will speak loudly and clearly to everyone concerned about America’s perpetual fault line.

Sherrilyn Ifill is the president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund based in Washington, DC, and is a co-author, with Loretta Lynch, Bryan Stevenson, and Anthony C. Thompson, of A Perilous Path (The New Press).

Loretta Lynch was the eighty-third attorney general of the United States and lives in Washington, D.C. She is a co-author, with Sherrilyn Ifill, Bryan Stevenson, and Anthony C. Thompson, of A Perilous Path (The New Press).

Bryan Stevenson is the author of Just Mercy and the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Alabama. He is a co-author, with Sherrilyn Ifill, Loretta Lynch, and Anthony C. Thompson, of A Perilous Path (The New Press).

Anthony C. Thompson is a professor and faculty director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at New York University School of Law. He is the author of Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities and Dangerous Leaders, a co-author, with Sherrilyn Ifill, Loretta Lynch, and Bryan Stevenson, of A Perilous Path (The New Press), and editor of Raising the Bar: Diversifying Big Law (The New Press). He lives in New York.