As the Trump administration attempts to remove exhibits focused on race and slavery from national parks and reviews the Smithsonian Institution’s approach to history, cultural institutions are struggling with how best to respond.

Bryan Stevenson, 65, is a civil rights lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law group that represents imprisoned and condemned inmates. He has a message for those cultural institutions: expand your efforts, don’t retreat.

“We dishonor those who came before us if in this moment of crisis we remain silent,” Mr. Stevenson said. “I don’t think it’s just unempathetic. I don’t think it’s just cowardly. I think it’s dishonorable.”

Mr. Stevenson, whose memoir “Just Mercy” became a movie of the same name, has helped transformed Montgomery into a global destination for reckoning with the nation’s racial past. His E.J.I. Legacy Sites — museums and monuments focused on racial injustice — have drawn over two million visitors.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice features 805 steel monuments hanging suspended, each bearing the names of lynching victims from a different county. Visitors walk beneath them in silence, confronted by the weight of terror. Nearby, the Legacy Museum takes visitors through the journey from enslavement to mass incarceration.

His newest site, the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, opened in March 2024 on 17 acres, featuring work from more than two dozen artists and a towering National Monument to Freedom — a 43-foot-tall wall inscribed with the 122,000 surnames adopted by formerly enslaved people listed in the 1870 census. The park opened the same week Alabama banned teaching “divisive concepts” about race in public schools and universities.

The Equal Justice Initiative’s latest project, the Elevation Hotel, was designed as a sanctuary for visitors engaging with this difficult history. I interviewed Mr. Stevenson recently in Montgomery as he walked through the sites and prepared for the hotel’s opening on Oct. 8.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

How would you describe the environment for cultural institutions engaged in telling the unvarnished story of our country’s racial history now?

I see the administration’s attempt to review and remove exhibits as proof that our work is critically important. I feel incredibly lucky that we’re eight years into establishing our major public history sites and cultural work. If we were just starting this effort, it would be too late to successfully fight back against this political push to erase certain difficult or inconvenient historical truths.

If you could bring Donald Trump to Montgomery right now, which of your sites would you take him to, and what specific truth would you want him to confront?

I would take him through the museum, just so he could understand the connection between what happened during the trans-Atlantic slave trade and today. It’s so interesting when he says, “Stop talking about how bad slavery was.” He thinks of himself as being anti-crime and tough on criminals.

Well, kidnapping 13 million people is a crime. It was a crime in the 15th century. There’s never been a time in human history where kidnapping was seen as acceptable. We’re talking about crime victims who weren’t just victimized for a day or a week; they were victimized for their whole lives.

He would never say to the people who lost loved ones on 9/11, “Oh, you guys should stop talking about what happened on 9/11.” He did the opposite. I want him to understand that what Black people went through is the exact same thing, except we never got comforted. We never got embraced.

And I would bring him to the lynching memorial because the people who were lynching Black people thought they were keeping the white community safe. This will send a very strong message about where that path leads.

Given the threats to federal funding and political scrutiny, what is the responsibility right now of cultural institutions focused on the Black experience and marginalized histories?

We’re going to have to do things that are uncomfortable. Given the knowledge and the resources and the privileges that so many of us have, we can’t afford to hope somebody else does the truth-telling for us.

We didn’t take any federal funding at our sites. You can get philanthropic support. You don’t have to take federal money. And if the federal government is involved and tries to take away the essence of these cultural institutions, I would advise them to tell the government, “Keep your money.”

I keep giving these talks, and I say, “They may try to take away our 501(c)(3) tax status, which would be devastating. But I would rather be a truth-teller and taxed, than to be silent and untaxed.” The room is usually just dead quiet, but I really feel that way.

To bend would also dishonor the legacy of those who did not bend. You got to stand, even when people say sit down.

Inside the Legacy Museum, visitors are surrounded by harrowing evidence, including the newspaper headlines celebrating lynchings and the audio testimonies of the wrongly condemned. How do you respond to the argument that we should not focus on this brutal, graphic history?

You have to be privileged and protected to go through life only thinking positive thoughts.

It’s like saying, “I’m going to the doctor, but I’ve already instructed my doctor, Don’t give me any bad news.” If your doctor isn’t allowed to be truthful with you, you’re going to get sick, and you’re going to die prematurely. So if you don’t want to be sick, if you don’t want to die, you have to be willing to hear the truth of your condition.

If we have the courage to hear the truth of this, there are things we can do to recover from this history of violence. It begins by committing to being against violence, being committed to the rule of law, to actually educating people about what happens when you give in to fear and anger.

Even in relationships, if you want to be in a good, healthy relationship, if you make a mistake and your partner is forbidden from giving voice to that, you’re just going to breed resentment and hostility. I just think that applies to history.

The new hotel is unusual. It is designed as a place of refuge for people who have toured Montgomery and your sites — a journey that can be incredibly emotionally draining and painful. Why do you see places like the hotel as important?

More than ever, those who are courageous enough to not be silent, to pursue the truth of our history, are going to need shelter. They’re going to need protection. They’re going to need help to navigate this moment, where it’s become dangerous to have museums and cultural institutions that are honest about history.

That image of Private Gordon and his brutalized back — that’s something we want everybody to see. Until you understand the brutality and cruelty of slavery, you’re not going to appreciate the harm it created.

The Black Church was a place of refuge during the civil rights movement. Even during slavery, when enslaved people got space to get away, it was a place where you found the strength and the courage to do the things that had to be done. I think we need that today.

You describe yourself and your historic sites as being part of a wider narrative struggle over telling the nation’s story. What do you mean by that?

I do think we’re in the midst of a narrative struggle. We won the deconstruction of legal apartheid. Now, we’re in a moment where I think the battle is a narrative battle. We can no longer rely on the rule of law alone. We have to engage in the storytelling, the teaching that helps this country recognize why we are still in a struggle for equality and justice.

You’ve described having to navigate these presumptions yourself, even as an accomplished lawyer. Can you share an example?

I was in a courtroom once, and a judge came in, saw me sitting there, and said, “Hey, I don’t want any defendant sitting in my courtroom without counsel. You get back out there in the hallway.” I had to apologize and explain I was the lawyer. They just laughed.

I made myself smile and laugh because I knew if I got angry, it would hurt my client. But driving away afterward, I kept thinking: I’m a lawyer who has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, and I’m still required to laugh at my own humiliation to get justice for my client.

When you have to constantly navigate these presumptions of dangerousness and guilt — it’s exhausting. And for me, that is the fuel that compels this need to create a new era of truth and justice.