William White, a Black father of five, was killed in 1948 in St. Louis, MO. A Northeastern Law student recently researched his death at the hands of two white men, for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project’s spring clinic.

The biased treatment of Joseph James, executed in 1908 following the Springfield Riots, the deprivation of a fair trial, motivated CRRJ and Northwestern’s CWC to argue for posthumous pardon for James, representing an opportunity for healing in Springfield, justice for James and all Black Americans unjustly executed during the Jim Crow era.

We sit down with Gina Nortonsmith, project archivist for the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive, who is helping to collect stories of racial violence in the Jim Crow era so that they can be told accurately and in full.