Ana Souffront ’23 studied political science at the Loyola University of Chicago, was a member of the Black cultural center, and engaged in campus protests, largely concerning on-campus police interactions with students.
Her decision to attend law school was “absolutely insane,” she said, because “the only lawyer I knew was my dad’s immigration attorney.” Souffront, whose father is Dominican, grew up in the small suburban town of Woodbury, Minnesota. She said she was accustomed to being asked “what are you?” and “where are you from?”
“Growing up at that time, especially being in a racially-mixed family, we were always encountering microaggressions or just blatant racism,” she said.
These experiences in her formative years galvanized her to pursue a career in law.
It was Northeastern Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project that convinced her to apply.
“Having a better understanding of how our legal system works was the reason I wanted to go to law school,” she said. “I was really blessed to have such amazing professors who were very progressive and who were questioning our current systems, wanting to pursue something more representative and pushing students to consider the whole picture.”
Souffront joined the CRRJ clinic in 2022, taught at the time by former clinic director Katie Sandson and attorney Raymond Wilkes. Her docket contained minimal details on four cases – the killings of Carlisle Mason, Woodrow Wilson, George Barrow and Howard Cousins.
“As I think about my time at CRRJ, it was such a unique experience, but also I found it incredibly difficult,” she said. She spent hours poring over news articles trying to determine the facts in each case and reconcile often conflicting reports. “The violence of it was really difficult,” she said, “I got attached quickly.”
It would be the killing of Howard Cousins in 1952, and the intersection of race and mental health in this case, that would leave a lasting impression on Souffront.
Read more about the killing of Howard Cousins in the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive
About the Archive
The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive houses case files and documents for more than 1,000 cases of racial homicides in the Jim Crow South. Co-founded by Melissa Nobles, professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Margaret Burnham, CRRJ director and professor of law at Northeastern, these uncovered stories highlight how violence affected lives, defined legal rights and shaped politics between 1930 and 1954.
Cousins, a fertilizer plant employee, was killed by police officers in Vance County, North Carolina. Clearly in distress and experiencing extreme bouts of paranoia, Cousins set his bed on fire. His sister, fearing for their safety, called the police. When officers arrived, Cousins, allegedly wielding an axe, fled to a neighbor’s house and barricaded himself inside. Newspapers reported that police officers used tear gas and fired shots into the house, killing Cousins. Department of Justice records state the police chief authorized C. C. Loughlin, Jr., a volunteer fireman, to shoot Cousins.
“When Cousins met with the police, they only escalated the situation,” said Souffront. “We all know now, when you’re interacting with someone experiencing a mental health crisis meeting them with armed police officers is only going to make the situation worse, and that is exactly what happened. A little bit of de-escalation could have changed the circumstances in this case,” she said.
Often in law school we don’t see things in a holistic context, we focus on cases or theory. It’s easy to lose sight of the social, historical context. But CRRJ was one of those courses where you must look at it, there’s no avoiding it.”
Souffront observed that the echoes of Cousins’ killing more than 70 years ago could be heard in the recent murder of Sonya Massey.
On July 6, 2024, 36-year-old Massey, a Black woman with a history of mental illness, living in Woodside Township near Springfield, Illinois, was shot and killed in her home by Sean Grayson, a white deputy of the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office.
Massey, concerned there was a prowler on her property, called the police. Grayson, accompanied by another deputy, responded. They found nothing after searching her home. While complying with Grayson’s request to show her I.D., the conversation between officers and Massey quickly turned tense. Massey was asked to remove a pot of boiling water from the stove, to which she replied, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” Grayson threatened to shoot her in the face if she did not put down the pot. Massey apologized, but Grayson still shot her three times, killing her. Grayson allegedly then told the accompanying deputy not to retrieve his medical kit to help Massey.
Following the killing, Grayson was fired and charged with three counts of first-degree murder.
Massey’s death is another tragic example of the shoot-first, ask-questions-later mentality in a lot of our police forces. The use of violence was incredibly unnecessary in both cases.”
Souffront appreciates that limited mental health awareness in the 1950s might have impacted the officers’ response and that “we shouldn’t apply the same standard” in the Cousins case. Nonetheless, “we can still look at this case and ask why the situation was escalated in such a way,” she said. “I think Cousins being a Black man in distress exacerbated things.”
Souffront, who is a licensed attorney working at a DEI consulting firm in Minneapolis, hopes to transition into policy work. Her passion for policy comes from a desire to treat the inequities in our legal system at the source instead of merely addressing their symptoms.
“Being a part of this project, I recognized the racism that is ingrained in the foundation of our country,” she said.
“The whole purpose of CRRJ is to bring justice to these cases,” said Souffront, “to give surviving relatives the justice they deserve, to continue to say their names, tell their stories and shed light on the ways in which their stories are still present in our modern day.”
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