By Hands Now Known: CRRJ Digital Archive Conference

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.

>>Photo Gallery

>>Conference program

 

Date:

October 6-7, 2022

Location:

Northeastern University 

October 6, 2022

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

October 7, 2022

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 KelleyAssociate Professor of Law and Business, Northeastern University

PANELISTS:
 

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

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