“In a discussion at Harvard’s Memorial Church, the Atlanta preacher called mass incarceration “a scandal on the soul of America” and challenged his listeners to “imagine a different future.” An activist and pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. served until his death in 1968, Warnock said the issue is the nation’s most pressing civil rights problem and that finding ways to stop a system rooted in slavery that disproportionately locks up men of color is a moral imperative. According to The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., research and advocacy center, people of color make up 37 percent of the nation’s population but 67 percent of inmates in prison.“

Harvard Gazette

October 17, 2019