Bryan Stevenson.ANN ARBOR—Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights lawyer and social justice activist, will receive the 2016 Wallenberg medal at the University of Michigan.

After the medal presentation, Stevenson will give the 25th Wallenberg Lecture at 7:30 p.m. March 7, 2017, at Rackham Auditorium. The humanitarian award honors Raoul Wallenberg, a U-M alumnus who saved tens of thousands of Jews near the end of World War II.

Stevenson has represented death row prisoners since 1985, when he was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. He is committed to serving the legal needs of the poor in the Deep South.

He is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization he founded in 1989 that focuses on social justice and human rights in the context of criminal justice reform in the United States.

EJI litigates on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged, poor people denied effective representation, and others whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct.

Stevenson’s arguments have convinced the U.S. Supreme Court that juveniles in non-homicide cases may not be sentenced to life without parole. He is creating a memorial in Montgomery, Ala., to commemorate the more than 4,000 persons who were lynched in 12 southern states between 1871 and 1950.

He wrote the prize-winning book “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” and has won numerous awards and honors, including the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award Prize, ACLU National Medal of Liberty, Olof Palme Prize for international human rights, Gruber Prize for International Justice and Ford Foundation Visionaries Award.

The Wallenberg Medal and Lecture program honors a humanitarian who reflects the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg, a native of Sweden who graduated from the U-M College of Architecture in 1935.

Wallenberg became a diplomat and was sent on a rescue mission in 1944 to Budapest, Hungary. Over the course of six months, he issued thousands of protective passports and placed many thousands of Jews in safe houses throughout the besieged city. He confronted Hungarian and German forces to secure the release of Jews, whom he claimed were under Swedish protection. Wallenberg saved more than 80,000 Hungarian Jews.

For 25 years, U-M has awarded its Wallenberg Medal annually to a humanitarian who has devoted his or her life in service to others.

Past recipients of the Wallenberg Medal include Burmese human rights activist and Nobel Peace laureate Ang San Suu Kyi; Paul Rusesabagina, a leader in the fight against the Rwandan genocide; and Auschwitz survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel.

A complete list of past recipients, along with video or transcripts of their lectures, can be found at the Wallenberg website.

More information:

• Wallenberg Legacy