On June 13, 2026, the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, the Strickland family, and other community partners will gather to dedicate a historical marker honoring Denna and Estella Strickland in the Mount Calvary Baptist Church cemetery, confronting an enduring pattern of racial terror carried out by deputized white citizens in Coweta County, forcing public recognition of a long-suppressed act of racial violence.
Henry Andrews and Issac Mayo, both World War II veterans, were shot and killed by police officers, in North Carolina, in 1947. The circumstances remain unclear, as descendants search for answers and fight to have their relatives’ stories remembered.
The DOJ’s investigation found that “Memphis police officers regularly violate the rights of the people.” But the history of racial discrimination and the use of excessive force by MPD can be traced far earlier than the death of Tyre Nichols. It is the outcome of decades of impunity enjoyed by police who have ended Black lives without suffering any legal consequences.
Jordan Neely’s tragic death at the hands of a private citizen is a familiar story, one told many times in the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive in the cases of racially-motivated homicide on public conveyances in the Jim Crow South.
A case recently released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) under the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act, and initially investigated by CRRJ’s historian Dr. Jay Driskell, exposes the historical continuum that exists between the treatment of African Americans in public spaces in the twentieth century, and Christian Cooper’s experience in 2020.
The 2020 presidential election triggered a wave of concerns and legislation regarding election integrity, voter suppression and the security of American democracy. Over the last four years, states including Florida, Texas, Georgia and…
Filmed on location in rural Louisiana, featuring a corrupt local police force and a racist sheriff (Don Johnson) viewers may wonder if the recently released thriller Rebel Ridge is based on a true…
When I joined the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive project in October of 2016, my initial mandate was to find all the lynching cases in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)…
In the heart of the Black Belt, Wilcox County, Alabama, in 1953, Della’s Place was the spot for a late-night meal and some jukebox music once the bars in town had closed. The…
Development of a Research Strategy In 2008, CRRJ begun unearthing little-known cases of lynching and other forms of homicidal racial violence. During these early days, working closely with Northeastern University School of Law professors,…
The summer of 1946 was filled with a heightened fear of violence and injustice for the Black residents of Minden, Webster Parish, Louisiana. Black veterans returning home at the end of World War…
The history of racialized violence during the Jim Crow era is elevated and preserved in the letters housed in the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive.
This Indigenous Peoples Day, we remember Lincoln McGeisey and Palmer Sampson, and others still unnamed, even as we appreciate that the violent subjugation of Native communities has taken many forms.
This correspondence with Thurgood Marshall, civil-rights attorney, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund and Supreme Court justice, housed in the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive, reveals Marshall’s integrated approach to advocacy.
On August 31, 2021, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam granted posthumous pardons to seven Black men: Joe Henry Hampton, Frank Hairston Jr., Booker T. Millner, Howard Lee Hairston, Francis DeSales Grayson, John Clabon Taylor,…
On the afternoon of February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery went out for a jog. On the night of February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin went out for a walk. As we all know, they…
Cover Photo: John Lewis at the March on Washington in 1963. Getty Images. . . . We are tired. We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people…
A public lynching played itself out on our cell phones as we, with him, cried out in agony and anguish. Hattie DeBardelaben, Samuel Bacon: these individuals preceded in death Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Pamela Turner, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Breonna Taylor.
