Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project

Professor Margaret Burnham
Retro Report Short Documentary, “Ida B. Wells and the Long Crusade to Outlaw Lynching,”
(Released February 15, 2024).

Professor Margaret Burnham Receives the 2023 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism
(May 9, 2023)

Live from the New York Public Library: Reconstructing the Violence of Jim Crow with Margaret A. Burnham and Saidiya Hartman
(October 20, 2021)

C-SPAN Interview: Q&A with Margaret Burnham, “By Hands Now Known”
(October 15, 2022)
Professor Margaret Burnham, author of By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners,  talks about the largely unknown Black victims of racial violence in the South between the early to mid-twentieth century.

“History is Lunch: Margaret A. Burnham, “By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners”,”
(October 12, 2022).
History is Lunch Event Hosted by the Mississippi Department of Archives & History
>> Watch Video

A Fireside Chat with Professors Margaret Burnham and Deborah Ramirez, co-directors of Northeastern Law’s New Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR). Brown Forum | Women in the Law Conference Keynote (May 13, 2022)

A Conversation Between Professor Margaret Burnham and Professor Régine Jean-Charles
Northeastern University’s Annual Event Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, “A Tribute to the Dream: Voting Rights and the ‘Threat to Justice Everywhere,’” (January 17, 2022)

Digital Short:“The War at Home,” PBS | American Experience (April 14, 2021)
)

A Tribute to the Dream: The Need for ‘Good Trouble’
January 2021

Murder in Mobile
(January 2019)
A documentary short film about race, murder and one family’s search for the truth seventy years later. In 1948, in Mobile, Alabama, a black man named Rayfield Davis was beaten to death by a white man who was not prosecuted. The crime was forgotten until 2012, when Northeastern Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CCRJ) assigned student Chelsea Schmitz ’13 to investigate. Watch this remarkable story of justice served at long last.

“Northeastern Program Uncovers the Stories Behind the Victims Of Lynching and Other Racial Violence in the Jim Crow Era”
WGBH’s Greater Boston (May 2, 2018).

“Great-Grandson of Lynching Victim Faces the Past: “This is American History” 
(CBS Evening News, April 10, 2018)

CRRJ Featured on Higher Ground, WHDH
Channel 7, Boston (October 18, 2015)

Professor Margaret Burnham on CCTV America
Professor Burnham discusses the significance of Nobel Peace award shared by Indian and Pakistani activists (October 10, 2014)

The Trouble I’ve Seen
Northeastern University Documentary Narrated by Julian Bond, Former Chairman of the NAACP (2013)

CITYLINE Interview with Director Rebecca Miller
(February 17, 2013)
Interview with director Rebecca Miller discussing  the video documentary, The Trouble I’ve Seen, which was produced for Northeastern Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice project. 

• “A Black Soldier Receives a Full Military Funeral — 83 Years After His Death. Here Is His Story,” NGN Magazine (April 25, 2024).
• “CRRJ Director Gives Talk at SXSW 2024,” CRRJ News Announcement (March 2024)
• “83 Years After His Killing, a Black Soldier Gets an Army Funeral,” The New York Times (March 25, 2024).
• “Column: Justice for a Black Soldier After 80 Years, With Help From These Lawyers,” Reuters (March 20, 2024).
• “Pvt. Albert King Receives Full Military Service, 83 Years After His Murder,” CRRJ News Announcement (March 2024).
• “Wu Announces Research Teams for Task Force on Reparations,” Bay State Banner (January 24, 2024).
• “Northeastern Law Team Selected as Research Partner by Boston’s Task Force on Reparations,” Northeastern Law News Announcement (January 24, 2024).
• “’Behind the Blue’: Uncovering truth with Civil Rights and Restorative Justice-Kentucky,” University of Kentucky News (February 6, 2024).
• “Black Soldier Killed During Jim Crow Era Now Honored With Historical Marker in N.C.,” NPR (December 13, 2023).
• “A Durham Moment: ‘We Can Only Inspire Young Folks if We Teach the Truth’,” 9th Street Journal (December 5, 2023).
• “By Hands Now Known Wins The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award,” CRRJ News Announcement (October 26, 202).
• “Margaret Burnham is 2023 Governor’s Awards in the Humanities Honoree,” Northeastern Law News Announcement (October 2, 2023).
• “Burnham, Bonauto and Kauffman to be Inducted into MLW Hall of Fame,” Northeastern Law News Announcement (August 29, 2023).
• “Study Finds Springfield Race Riot Site Meets Criteria To Be National Park,” State Journal-Register (June 15, 2023).
• “Posthumous Pardon Hearing To Be Held in Joe James Case,” CRRJ News Announcement (April 2023).
• “Restoring Justice and Setting the Record Straight,” Morgan Lewis News Announcement (January 20, 2023).
• “Black WWII Soldiers Asked a White Woman for Doughnuts. They Were Shot.” The Washington Post (January 15, 2023).
• “Lost, but Not Forgotten: The Story of Denna and Estella Strickland,” Atlanta Daily World (January 6, 2023).
• “Army Corrects the Record About a Black Soldier Killed by a White Sergeant in 1941,” The New York Times (December 10, 2022).
• “Northeastern Professor’s New Novel Explores Civil Rights-Era Cold Case,” News@Northeastern (November 16, 2022).
• “The U.S. Thinks ‘It Can’t Happen Here.’ It Already Has,” The New York Times (October 18, 2022).
• Video: “Q&A with Margaret Burnham, “By Hands Now Known”,” C-SPAN (October 15, 2022).
• “Noted Lawyer to Speak in Birmingham on Sunday about ‘Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners’,” Birmingham Times (October 15, 2022).
• Video: “History is Lunch: Margaret A. Burnham, “By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners”,” History is Lunch Event Hosted by the Mississippi Department of Archives & History (October 12, 2022).
• “The Most Consequential Project We Have.’ New Archive Gives Voice to Forgotten Victims of Lynching,” News@Northeastern (October 7, 2022).
• “Law Professor Unearths Cases of Racial Violence from the Jim Crow Era,” NPR’s “Fresh Air” (September 27, 2022).
• “1,000 Racial Homicides Investigated in Unprecedented Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive,” Northeastern Law News Announcement (September 27, 2022).
• “Jim Crow’s Forgotten History of Homicides,” The New York Times (September 21, 2022).
• “How the Jim Crow South Encouraged Racial Policing by Those With ‘No Legal Authority,” News@Northeastern (September 20, 2022).
• “Chicago Humanities Festival announces fall headliners, including Patti Smith, Jessica Lange and Chelsea Manning,” Chicago Tribune (September 13, 2022).
• “Professor Margaret Burnham’s New Book, By Hands Now Known, Challenges Our Understanding of the Jim Crow Era,” Northeastern Law News Announcement (September 12, 2022).
• “Finalists for the 2022 Kirkus Prize are Revealed,” Kirkus (September 8, 2022).
• “30 Books We Can’t Wait for This Fall,”  Los Angeles Times (August 30, 2022).
• “By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners,” Publishers Weekly (August 2022).
• “Writers to Watch: Fall 2022 Nonfiction Debuts,” Publishers Weekly (July 29, 2022)
• “Algiers Remembers Edwin Williams, Sr.,” WWL-TV (June 23, 2022).
• “Northeastern’s Racial Redress and Reparations Lab Is Creating a Tool for Lawmakers To Pursue Racial Redress,” News@Northeastern (June 15, 2022).
• “Two Years After George Floyd’s Murder, Has Anything Changed in Policing?,” News@Northeastern (May 25, 2022).
• “Remembering Bob Moses, 1935–2021,” The Nation (July 26, 2021).
• “Albert King is Not Forgotten,” The Washington Post Magazine (May 28, 2021).
• “Call For Action: The Guilty Verdicts in Derek Chauvin’s Trial Were Just the Beginning,” News@Northeastern (April 22, 2021).
• “Derek Chauvin’s Guilty Verdict Is a Step Toward Justice and Police Reform–but It’s Not the End of Racism in the US,” News@Northeastern (April 22, 2021).
• Digital Short:“The War at Home,” PBS | American Experience (April 14, 2021).
• “Payback for Pain and Loss: Reparations for Relatives of Lynching Victims?,” Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting (November 24, 2020).
• “Reparations ‘Essential’ to Addressing Systemic Racial Injustice, Speakers Say,” News@Northeastern (November 17, 2020).
• “72 Years Before George Floyd, This Police Killing Sparked National Protests,” Experience Magazine (November 12, 2020).
• “The John Lewis Legacy: Protecting the Right to be Free from Racist Policing,” CRRJ Blog (July 30, 2020).
• “A Black Man Accused of Rape, a White Officer in the Klan, and a 1936 Lynching That Went Unpunished,” The Washington Post (July 19, 2020).
• “Unearthing the Stories of Yesterday’s George Floyds,” The Boston Globe (July 17, 2020).
• “Don’t Touch Your Face: Pandemic Within a Pandemic,” Foreign Policy Podcast (June 15, 2020).
• “US Police Brutality Protests,” Al-Jazeera (June 2020).
• “Todd & Weld LLP Provides Support to CRRJ in Honor of George Floyd,” Northeastern Law News Announcement (June 4, 2020).
• “How Do Today’s Black Lives Matter Protests Compare to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s?,” News@Northeastern (June 4, 2020).
• “The Half Was Never Told: Honoring George Floyd,” CRRJ Blog (June 2, 2020).
• “A Black Man was Killed in Georgia, Should the Case be Tried as a Hate Crime?,” News@Northeastern (May 21, 2020).
• “Was Ahmaud Arbery Lynched and Why Does it Matter?,”CRRJ Blog (May 9, 2020).
• “Boy Scout Sex-Abuse Suit Involving Floridian Could Open Floodgates for More Victim Claims,” Miami Herald, January 6, 2020.
• “Mellon Foundation Awards $750,000 to Northeastern Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project,” Northeastern Law News Announcement (September 17, 2019).
• “Toni Morrison’s Influence Extends Beyond Literature,”Northeastern News (August 9, 2019).
• “Ford Foundation Funds CRRJ Archive,” Northeastern Law Magazine (August 21, 2019).
• “Toni Morrison’s Influence Extends Beyond Literature,” News@Northeastern (August 9, 2019).
• “Murder in Mobile Hits the Red Carpets,” News@Northeastern (June 20, 2019).
• “NJ Teens That Tweeted Their Civil Rights Bill Into Law Will Now Lobby for Federal Funding,” Fox News (March 8, 2019).
• “‘From Students in High School All the Way to the President’s Desk.’ How a Government Class Fought for the Release of Unsolved FBI Civil Rights Case Files,” The Washington Post (February 23, 2019).
• “Teens Tweet Trump, Find Senate Ally, Score Civil Rights Win,” Associated Press (February 23, 2019).
• “The Healing Project: Finding Justice for Families of Victims of Injustice,” The Louisiana Weekly (November 26, 2018).
• “Mobilian Honored With Street Dedication 70 Years After His Murder,” WSFA (August 18, 2018).
• “Recalling Their Names: Mobile Honors Victims of Jim Crow-Era Killings,” AL.com (August 18, 2018).
• “After Seven Decades, Alabama Honors Jim Crow-Era Victims,” News@Northeastern (August 18, 2018).
• “Memorializing Racially-Motivated Deaths Beyond Lynchings,” The American Homefront Project (August 14, 2018).
• “A Black Family Confronts a 70-Year-Old Killing and a White Man’s Exoneration,” The Washington Post (August 11, 2018).
• “Mobile Street Name to Honor Jim Crow-Era Murder Victim,” Miami Herald (July 24, 2018).
• “Northeastern Program Uncovers the Stories Behind the Victims Of Lynching and Other Racial Violence in the Jim Crow Era,” WGBH’s Greater Boston (May 2, 2018).

• “Lynching Memorial Forces Us to Confront Our Racist Past — And Present,” WBUR’s Cognoscenti (May 2, 2018).
• “Descendant Of Slave Owner: Lynching Memorial Brings To Light A ‘Buried Narrative’,” KERA News (April 28, 2018).
• “Harvey Church Honors Black Man Killed by Police in Gretna 70 Years Ago,” The Times-Picayune (April 28, 2018).
• “Gretna Family One Step Closer to Justice Decades After Police Killing of Black Man,” (April 27, 2018).
• “’He Left a Great Legacy:’ Ceremony to Commemorate Killing of Black Man in Gretna 70 Years Ago,” The New Orleans Advocat (April 27, 2018).
• “Engaging Imaginations, Making History,”Carnegie Reporter (April 26, 2018)
• “A Lynching’s Long Shadow,” The New York Times (April 25, 2018)
• “Great-Grandson of Lynching Victim Faces the Past: “This is American History,” (CBS Evening News, April 10, 2018)

• “Confronting the Past: A Young Man Tries to Understand the Lynching of his Great-Grandfather,”  Arizona Republic (April 4, 2018)
• “Don’t Go to Georgia, His Mom said. But He Had to Know Who Lynched His Great-Grandfather,” USA Today (April 4, 2018)
• “Your Turn: How My Great-Grandfather’s Lynching Impacted My Views on Race,” Arizona Republic (April 4, 2018)
• “Ga. Chief’s Lynching Apology Draws Worldwide Attention,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (March 17, 2018)
• “Georgia Sheriff Acknowledges Law Enforcement’s Role in 1947 Lynching,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (March 14, 2018)
• “Sessions Feigns Concern For Asian-Americans To Gut Affirmative Action,” WBUR’s Cognoscenti (August 4, 2017)
• “Documenting Lynching and its Influence: The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Clinic at Northeastern University is Doing Just That,” The Metropole (June 26, 2017)
• “Tuskegee Hosts Conference Remembering Those Fallen to Injustice,”  WSFA 12 News (June 15, 2017)
• “Symposium on Racial Violence History in State of Alabama,” The Tuskegee News (June 8, 2017)
• “Group Archiving Racially Motivated Murders,”The Oxford Eagle (May 30, 2017)
• “Northeastern Unveils Project Commemorating History of Lower Roxbury,” The Daily Free Press (April 19, 2017)
• “Nearly 8 Decades Later, an Apology for a Lynching in Georgia,” The New York Times (January 26, 2017)
• “In a First, Georgia Police Chief to Apologize for 1940 Lynching,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (January 26, 2017)
• “A Reality Check on Claims of Vintage ‘Fake News’,” The Washington Post (January 5, 2017)
• “Bringing Justice, and Closure, in Civil Rights Cold Case,”  News@Northeastern (January 5, 2017)
• “Boston Law School Leads Project On Cold Cases Of Lynching,” okayplayer.com (January 4, 2017)
• “Getting Away With Murder,” The Marshall Project (January 3, 2017)
• “Recent Graduate Shines Investigative Light on 75- Year- Old Civil Rights Cold Case,” News@Northeastern (September 23, 2016)
• “A Lynching Kept Out of Sight,” The Washington Post (September 2, 2016)
• “CRRJ Provides First Full Account of Notorious 1947 Georgia Jailhouse Killing,”  CRRJ Press Release (August 22, 2016)
• “Cambridge Rindge And Latin Students Seek Answers In 1940 Louisiana Lynching” WBUR News (June 3, 2016)
• “Burnham Selected for Prestigious Carnegie Fellows Program” (April 19, 2016)
• “Margaret Burnham Restores Justice in Violent Cold Cases,”Long Beach Press Telegram (February 26, 2016)
• “‘Commemoration for a purpose,’” News@Northeastern (November 7, 2015)
• CRRJ Featured on Higher Ground, WHDH, Channel 7, Boston (October 18, 2015)
• “60 Years Later, Echoes of Emmett Till’s Killing,” The New York Times (August 31, 2015)
• “The Cold Cases of the Jim Crow Era,” The New York Times (August 28, 2015)
• “3Qs: Law professor remembers civil rights icon,” News@Northeastern (August 20, 2015)
• “Racial Violence and Restorative Justice,” Daily Kos (August 9, 2015)
• “What We Can Learn From Sandra Bland’s Tragic End,” WBUR’s Cognoscenti (July 28, 2015)
• ‘We Are All Hurt,’ News@Northeastern (June 24, 2015)
• “Baltimore Wasn’t The First City To Burn, And It Won’t Be The Last,” WBUR’s Cognoscenti (May 1, 2015)
• Obama Walks a Fine Line on Baltimore Riots, RN Breakfast Radio (April 30, 2015)
• Black in Time: Generations Connect Seeking Justice, Miami Herald (April 23, 2015)
• Professor Margaret Burnham Comments on the Walter Scott Case, Al Jazeera English (April 9, 2015)
• 3 Questions: Melissa Nobles on Advancing Racial and Restorative Justice,  MIT News (April 6, 2015)
• VT Law Student Investigates Racial Killings, Burlington Free Press (March 15, 2015)
• Truth and Reconciliation is Coming to America From the Grassroots, The Guardian (February 26, 2015)
• Law Student Limelight: Hannah Adams, Northeastern University, Lawdragon Campus (February 1, 2015)
• “Street Cars Center of Many Racially Motivated Killings,” GPB Radio’s On Second Thought (January 15, 2015)
• “Documenting Jim Crow Era Deaths,” BYU Radio’s Morning Show (January 14, 2015)
• “Alabama’s Jim Crow Era Murders Under New Spotlight,” AL.com (January 8, 2015)
• “The Goal: To Remember Each Jim Crow Killing, From The ’30s On,” NPR’s Weekend Edition (January 3, 2015)
• “A trip back to Atlanta’s Streetcars in the Jim Crow Era,” The Atlanta-Journal Constitution (January 2, 2015)
• “Northeastern University students uncover forgotten killings from Jim Crow era,” The Boston Globe (December 21, 2014)
• “The New Great Dissenter: On Affirmative Action, Sotomayor Gets It Right,” NPR’s Cognoscenti (April 25, 2014)
• “A Nation-Creating Moment: Remembering The March On Washington,”  NPR’s Cognoscenti (August 28, 2013)
• “The Justice System’s Role In The Death Of Trayvon Martin,” NPR’s Cognoscenti (July 26, 2013)
• “Confronting Our Legacy Of Racial Violence (With A Little Help From The President),” NPR’s Cognoscenti (January 21, 2013)
• “Illuminating the African-American Experience,” News@Northeastern (January 12, 2012)
• “Justice Follows Decades of Silence,” The Boston Globe (June 23, 2010)
• “Miss. Officials Agree To Settlement In ’64 Slayings,” NPR’s All Things Considered (June 21, 2010)
• Margaret Burnham and Janeen Blake discuss the Dee and Moore Case on The Callie Crossley Show.
• CRRJ welcomes the families of Charles Moore and Henry Dee to Northeastern University School of Law
• “Town Honors Victim of Civil Rights-Era Violence” Longview News Journal (October 24, 2010)
• Margaret Burnham discusses CRRJ’s restorative justice efforts and the Reese case on Radio Boston, WBUR
• CRRJ’s Louis Allen case profiled on 60 Minutes
• CRRJ’s Isadore Banks case profiled on Anderson Cooper 360°

November 14, 2022
Reckoning with Historical Injustice: Journalists at the Frontlines
A conversation with Jerry Mitchell, an investigative journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, MacArthur Fellow and founder of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting.

October 7, 2022
By Hands Now Known: The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Archive
An all-day hybrid conference celebrating the launch of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Burnes-Nobles Archive and Professor Margaret Burnham’s new book, By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners.

September 20, 2022
PPE Speaker Series: Professor Margaret Burnham
Northeastern University’s Politics, Philosophy, and Economics program hosted a lecture and Q&A event with Professor Margaret Burnham, director of Northeastern Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project and faculty co-director of its Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR).

Wednesday, April 28, 2021 
Has Justice Been Served? Reflections on the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin
Northeastern faculty, student and staff panelists offered reflections on the verdicts, and consider whether or not this moment marks a turning point in the nation’s acknowledgment of and accountability for racial justice. Panelists will also explore what the verdicts may mean for the wider Northeastern community and contemplate how this moment could inform the work begun last summer to create a more inclusive campus.

Wednesday, March 17, 2021 
CRRJ Workshop: Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Join us for a conversation with Maya Davis about the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Maya Davis is a member of the Maryland Lynching Commission, Senior Research Archivist for the Study of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland, and Executive Director for the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture.

April 15, 2021 
Confronting Racial Injustice Panel: Boston School Desegregation through the Rearview Mirror
This panel is part of a five-part virtual series that will explore historical events in Massachusetts history in order to probe how slavery, racism and their legacies have and continue to influence the criminal justice system.

March 11, 2021
Confronting Racial Injustice Panel: Redlining: From Slavery to $8 in 400 Years
This panel is part of a five-part virtual series that will explore historical events in Massachusetts history in order to probe how slavery, racism and their legacies have and continue to influence the criminal justice system.

Tuesday, November 17, 2020 
Lynching: Reparations as Restorative Justice
Please join the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) and Africana Studies Program at Northeastern University for this significant and timely conference on reparations as a form of restorative justice for the families of lynching victims.
Special guests: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Angela Y. Davis and Congressperson Sheila Jackson Lee

Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Connecting with NUSL Centers and Projects Around Racism and Police Brutality
The Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration (CPIAC); Center for Law, Innovation and Creativity (CLIC); Center for Health Policy and Law (CHPL), Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE), Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) and NuLawLab invite Northeastern Law students to a virtual meeting to discuss the ways the School of Law’s centers and projects can collaborate with and support students in our responses to ongoing structural racism and police brutality.

Monday, June 8, 2020
How Do We Restore Justice for George Floyd?
A FacebookLive discussion led by Professor Margaret Burnham about civil rights and restorative justice. This discussion is one in a series of events in which we will gather in solidarity to confront racial injustice and chart the course for lasting change.

Friday, May 1, 2020
Racial Justice, Restoration and Inclusion: Human Rights Principles and Local Practice
This program explored he relevance of human rights norms in efforts to advance racial justice and address historical and ongoing racism, discrimination and intolerance. Speakers examined strategies to shape effective remedies and redress, including reparations abnd restorative justice, drawing from international, national and local examples. Panelists included Carmelyn Malalis ’01, chair of the New York City Human Rights Commission. Professor Margaret Burnham, faculty director of Northeastern Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), delivered the keynote address.

March 25, 2020
Film Screening: The Silence of Others
Join us for or a screening of The Silence of Others, an award-winning documentary directed by Robert Bahar and Almudena Carracedo.

CRRJ workshop featuring Shytierra Gaston, Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University College of Social Sciences and Humanities. Details to follow soon.

June 22, 2019
Murder in Mobile Screening at the Roxbury International Film Festival
Murder in Mobile continues its festival run with a screening at the Roxbury International Film Festival. The inspiring short documentary which highlights the work of NUSL’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Clinic (CRRJ) will be shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on Saturday, June 22, at 12:30 p.m.

June 26, 2019
CRRJ Workshop Series: Interpretive Limitations of Genetic Ancestry Testing and the Case for Reparations
Featuring Jada Benn Torres, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Genetic Anthropology and Biocultural Studies Laboratory, Vanderbilt University

January 25, 2019
Tribute to the Dream: A Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
On January 25, the Northeastern community gathered to pay homage to the life and values of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. through the power of film, music and conversation. The event featured the premier of “Murder in Mobile,” a documentary featuring the law school’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Clinic (CRRJ) and the 1948 murder of Rayfield Davis, whose case was unearthed and investigated by Chelsea Schmitz ’13. Danielle Ponder ’11 (right) set the tone for the premiere with her band, The Tomorrow People.

Following the screening, Professor Margaret Burnham, founder and director of CRRJ, conversed with Professor Roderick L. Ireland, former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. “The accounting that we’re doing, the accumulating of cases, is in part a response to Martin Luther King’s challenge that there is an unpaid debt,” Burnham said. “Because those stories have to be told in order for us fully to understand our history. Simply collecting material is not enough.”

Murder in Mobile

December 12, 2018
CRRJ Workshop Series: Silences and Erasures
Diane Harriford, Africana Studies, Women’s Studies and Sociology, Vassar College; Visiting Scholar, CRRJ
Dr. Harriford is utilizing the CRRJ-Nobles Archive to examine the intersection of gender and sexuality with the racial violence documented there.  She explores, in the context of this violence, women’s resistance, the impact of heterosexual or homosexual affective ties across race, and black and white masculine identity.

November 14, 2018
CRRJ Workshop Series: Freedom’s Cost: Children & Youth in the Black Freedom Struggle
Francoise Hamlin, Africana Studies and History, Brown University Dr. Hamlin’s project positions children and youth at the center of the postwar African American civil rights movements by addressing activism’s personal and communal costs.

October 20, 2018
Past Harms, Present Remedies: Law Enforcement and Families Affected by Historical Police Violence in Conversation
Before cell phones and body cameras, African Americans who were killed because of the actions of law enforcement officers had virtually no recourse to courts or justice. Although their cases were ignored by public officials for decades, today families and communities are unearthing the stories of these lost lives and calling for recognition and repair from local police departments and other government leaders. CRRJ is convening a public gathering in New Orleans on Saturday, October 20, 2018, at Loyola College of Law to talk about the impact of deaths at the hands of police in the mid-twentieth century on today’s initiatives to improve police accountability and police-community relations.

October 24, 2018 | 4:00 PM | 360 Dockser Hall
CRRJ Workshop Series | Lift Every Voice: A Way to Meaningful Repair
Linda J. Mann, Visiting Scholar, Alliance for Historical Dialogue & Accountability at Columbia University; VP of Research for the Georgetown Memory Project (GMP)
Dr. Mann will discuss the GMP’s project identifying and locating 300 enslaved people sold by Georgetown University and the Maryland Jesuits to plantations in Louisiana in 1838 and tracing their direct descendants.

October 30, 2018 | 4:00 PM | 240 Dockser Hall
Sighted Eyes | Feeling Heart
Screening of Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, a documentary directed by Tracy Heather Strain, Northeastern Professor of Media and Screen Studies and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker. The screening was followed by a conversation with the Tracy Heather Strain and a panel featuring Professor Margaret Burnham, Director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project.

November 14, 2018 | 4:00 PM | 360 Dockser Hall
CRRJ Workshop Series: Freedom’s Cost: Children & Youth in the Black Freedom Struggle
Francoise Hamlin, Africana Studies and History, Brown University
Dr. Hamlin’s project positions children and youth at the center of the postwar African American civil rights movements by addressing activism’s personal and communal costs.

December 12, 2018 | 4:00 PM | 360 Dockser Hall
CRRJ Workshop Series: Silences and Erasures
Diane Harriford, Africana Studies, Women’s Studies and Sociology, Vassar College; Visiting Scholar, CRRJ
Dr. Harriford is utilizing the CRRJ-Nobles Archive to examine the intersection of gender and sexuality with the racial violence documented there. She explores, in the context of this violence, women’s resistance, the impact of heterosexual or homosexual affective ties across race, and black and white masculine identity.

August 18, 2018
Recalling Their Names: Racial Terror in Jim Crow Mobile
The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project’s (CRRJ) investigation of six Jim Crow-era murders will be featured in an exhibit, “Murders in Mobile,” opening August 18 at the History Museum of Mobile in Alabama. In addition, a Mobile street will be named in honor of Rayfield Davis, one of the murder victims.

March 17, 2018 | Natchez, Mississippi
CRRJ Honors Samuel Mason Bacon 
Professor Margaret Burnham, Kaylie Simon and Mary Nguyen ’14 joined the family of Samuel Bacon at the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture to honor the life and legacy of Samuel Bacon.

March 10, 2018 |  West Point, Georgia
Henry “Peg” Gilbert and Mae Gilbert: Honoring Their Lives and Restoring Justice
Professor Margaret Burnham and Tara Dunn ’17 joined the family of Henry “Peg” Gilbert and Mae Gilbert for an event reflecting on their lives and recalling the police murder of Henry Gilbert in 1947.

March 3, 2018 | Selma, Alabama
Resurrecting Their Stories: A Community-based Oral History Project
The third in a three-part symposium series. Prior workshops were held at Tuskegee University and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. 

January 26, 2018 | Northeastern University School of Law
Digital Red Records
A workshop, hosted by CRRJ, on digital collections covering historical racial violence in the United States. 

October 20-21, 2017 | Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
Resurrecting Their Stories: A Community-based Oral History Project
Proudly presented by NUSL’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), The Elmore Bolling Foundation and Alabama NAACP.

June 9-11, 2017
Resurrecting Their Stories: A Community-based Oral History Project
Proudly presented by NUSL’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site, Tuskegee University Archives, The Elmore Bolling Foundation and Alabama NAACP.

June 17, 2017
Reparative Justice and Social Healing: Research and Reflection on Historic Violence
Proudly presented as part of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice’s Sixth National Conference, this three-hour session will bring together artists, activists and researchers to think creatively about the national movement to come to terms with, and transcend, historic racial violence.