ChangeThis

ChangeThis is our weekly series of essays, extended book excerpts, and original articles from authors, experts, and leaders.

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The primary author of the Declaration of Independence was Thomas Jefferson. For all the high ideals he provided the document and our country, he was also, like the majority of signatories to the Declaration, a slave owner. There were also ardent abolitionists in the group that signed the document, but they were outnumbered. It is representative of the contradiction and conflict between America’s original sin and its original promise that still courses through our lives and politics today.
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I was in my late twenties and about to start my fourth year at the SPDC when I met Walter McMillian. His case was one of the flood of cases I’d found myself frantically working on after learning of a growing crisis in Alabama. The state had nearly a hundred people on death row as well as the fastest-growing condemned population in the country, but it also had no public defender system, which meant that large numbers of death row prisoners had no legal representation of any kind.
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