On October 6-7, 2022, the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School of Law hosted a hybrid conference to mark the launch of the CRRJ Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive. Built by students in the CRRJ Clinic over the course of 15 years, the Archive is an unprecedented, publicly accessible digital collection of more than 1,000 cases – the documentary evidence of anti-Black racial killings from 1930-1954 in the Jim Crow South.
The conference also marked the publication of Professor Margaret Burnham’s book By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners.
Date:
October 6-7, 2022
Location:
Northeastern University
CRRJ Archive Launch and Student Recognition Event
A celebration of the students whose research led to the creation of the CRRJ Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive.
Joseph Aoun, President, Northeastern University
Margaret Burnham, Director, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, and University Distinguished Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law
Tara Dunn, NUSL ’17
James Hackney, Dean, Northeastern University School of Law
Noah Lapidus, NUSL ’20
Melissa Nobles, Chancellor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rashida Richardson, NUSL ’11
Kaylie Simon, NUSL ’11
Welcome Remarks
Margaret Burnham, Director, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, and University Distinguished Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law
Dan Cohen, Dean of Libraries, Vice Provost for Information Collaboration, and Professor of History, Northeastern University
James Hackney, Dean, Northeastern University School of Law
Deborah Jackson, Managing Director, Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR), Northeastern University School of Law
Uta Poiger, Dean, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern Univeristy
Archival Collections and Restorative History
Archives have long been called to task for their colonial practices — collecting and valuing the powerful and dominant, limiting research to academic audiences, subjugating community knowledge, and trying to maintain an impossible standard — neutrality. This panel puts CRRJ into context with archives that have rejected colonial values and instead used their collections (analog and digital) to promote restorative history practices, increase the public’s understanding of the United States’ violently racialized history, and restore communities’ traditional practices through digital means.
MODERATOR:
Gina Nortonsmith, Project Archivist, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, Northeastern University
PANELISTS:
Daniel B. Domingues da Silva, Associate Professor of History, Rice University
Monica Muñoz Martinez, Associate Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin; Co-founder, Refusing to Forget
Tsione Wolde-Michael, Founding Director, Center for Restorative History, Smithsonian National Museum of American History
Historical Racial Violence in the Classroom: What are We Teaching?
This panel explores three academic programs in which students investigate and gather archival material on the subject of historical violence — and what it means to teach this historical material in an experiential modality.
MODERATOR:
Rose Zoltek-Jick, Associate Director, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, Northeastern University School of Law
PANELISTS:
Ada Goodly Lampkin, Director, Louis A. Berry Institute for Civil Rights and Justice, Southern University Law Center
Hank Klibanoff, Professor of Practice, English and Creative Writing, Emory College of Arts and Sciences
Katie Sandson, Program Director, Racial Redress and Reparations Lab, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, Northeastern University School of Law
CRRJ Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive Presentation
PRESENTER:
Gina Nortonsmith, Project Archivist, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, Northeastern University
Family History, U.S. History
The experiences of descendant families are at the heart of
CRRJ and the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive. We seek to capture and to preserve family memories that might otherwise be lost to history, and to ensure that families have access to the archival documents that our investigations have unearthed.
This panel explores the intergenerational effects of historical racial violence and the impact of CRRJ’s work on descendant families. We consider how the Archive can foster projects of restorative justice and repair.
MODERATOR:
Bayliss Fiddiman ’13, Director of Educational Equity, National Women’s Law Center
PANELISTS:
Evan Lewis, Great-grandson of Lent Shaw; Director, Legacy Coalition
Sheila Moss Brown, Granddaughter of Henry “Peg” Gilbert
James Williams, Esq., Pvt. Booker Spicely Historical Marker Working Group
Jonique Williams, Granddaughter of Edwin C. Williams
Historical Violence, Contemporary Inequality and Future Advocacy
Our understanding of historical racial violence in the American South during the Jim Crow era is vastly affected by what the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive reveals, but the cases therein also offer a window into contemporary conflicts and enduring inequities. While it is indisputable that past violence resonates long after the underlying events have transpired, researchers continue to puzzle over the theoretical conduits and empirical underpinnings that can trace how and why this history affects lived realities in the present. Here, we explore how the persistent undertow of violence shows up in our lives today, and the implications for policy and practice.
MODERATOR:
Melvin Kelley, Associate Professor of Law and Business, Northeastern University
Dania Francis, Assistant Professor of Economics, College of Liberal Arts, UMass Boston
Marissa Jackson Sow, Assistant Professor, University of Richmond School of Law
Inga Laurent, Professor, Gonzaga University School of Law
Christina Simko, Associate Professor of Sociology, Williams College
A Conversation: Margaret Burnham and Melissa Nobles — Lessons Learned and Hopes for the Archive
MODERATOR:
Patricia Williams, Professor of Law, Northeastern University
SPEAKERS:
Margaret Burnham, Director, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, and Professor of Law, Northeastern University
Melissa Nobles, Chancellor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology