Stand Against Racism conference to feature freed death row prisoner Anthony Ray Hinton

FRIDAY, May 3, 2024–The YWCA of Northwest Ohio will sponsor the 2024 Stand Against Racism conference on May 22 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at One Seagate in downtown Toledo.

Titled, “Until Justice Just Is: Building Bridges To Equity,” the keynote speaker will be Anthony Ray Hinton, who was released from prison in 2015 after spending 30 years on death row after being wrongly convicted of murder.

Hinton’s release was obtained with the assistance of the Equal Justice Initiative, led by attorney Bryan Stevenson. Since his release Hinton has traveled the world sharing his story and discussing changes that need to be made to prevent similar injustices from happening. As part of his activism he wrote the book, “The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row,” published by Macmillan Publishers.

An Oprah’s Book Club Summer 2018 Selection, the winner of the 2019 Christopher Award, and a New York Times bestseller, the book is “an amazing and heartwarming story, it restores our faith in the inherent goodness of humanity,” according to the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

According to his publisher: “In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free.

“But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence—full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015.

“With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Destined to be a classic memoir of wrongful imprisonment and freedom won, Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy.”

Pre-order Hinton’s book through Eventbrite for $10 before May 5 and pick up your copy at the conference. Tickets for the conference are $50 and include breakfast and lunch. There will be panel discussions concerning unequal treatment in the criminal justice system, the lasting impacts of racial trauma, mental health disparities faced by communities of color, and strategies for reform.

For registration contact Alexii Collins, Racial Justice Director at the YWCA of Northwest Ohio, at acollins@ywcanwo.org.