On April 17 2025, CRRJ Director and Founder Professor  Margaret Burnham was honored by The C.T. Vivian Foundation, during their 4th annual Kaleidoscope Awards for Literary Excellence, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Burnham’s work and latest book, By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners (Norton, 2022) was recognized at the ceremony as having “made exceptional contributions to the African American experience.”

Other honorees included, Dr. Jelani Cobb, author and Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism; and Patrick Phillips, poet and Professor of English at Stanford University.

By Hands Now Known examines the history of racialized lethal violence during the Jim Crow era. Burnham’s work has also won the 2023 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize. By Hands Now Known was also a finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and has been named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Oprah Daily, Kirkus, Chicago Public Library, and Publishers Weekly.