The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School of Law, held its annual Spring Clinic Grand Rounds on April 15 and 16 of this year.
Held over two days in Dockser Hall, the presentations gave the clinic’s participating students the opportunity to present case investigations undertaken throughout the semester before an interdisciplinary panel of scholars and experts. This year’s clinic was taught by Meg Gould, CRRJ’s Elizabeth Zitrin Justice Fellow, and Raymond Wilkes, CRRJ Senior Staff Attorney. Students focused on cases in which federal failures contributed to racial violence — work that feeds directly into CRRJ’s federal reparations project, which examines the federal government’s role and responsibility in the history of racial terror.
This year’s case investigations spanned more than three decades of the twentieth century and reach across the American South, Midwest, and beyond, from rural Georgia and Mississippi to Los Angeles and Chicago.
On Wednesday, April 15, seven law and journalism students presented the following cases:
- Oliver Phillips, Yonkers, New York, 1951 — presented by Cynthia Cote
- Pierce Wright, Yazoo, Mississippi, 1945 — presented by Ana Battaglino
- James Anderson, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1954 — presented by Chanel Palmer
- Levi Gant, Decatur, Georgia, 1946 — presented by Sophia Polisar
- Edward Washington Jr., Los Angeles, California, 1958 — presented by Edith Baez
- Jesse Leroy Jackson, Dayton, Ohio, 1943 — presented by Maggie Murphy
- Harvey Anderson Kirby, Jacksonville, Florida, 1946 — presented by Emily Glick
Panelists for the Wednesday session were Margaret Burnham, CRRJ Founder and Director; Jay Driskell CRRJ’s Lead Historian; Deborah Jackson, former Managing Director of the Center on Law, Equity, and Race at Northeastern Law; Quisquella Addison, Assistant Teaching Professor of Legal Skills in Social Context; and Gina Nortonsmith, Archivist for African American History at Northeastern University Library. Afternoon panelists included Assistant Professor of Law Aliza Hochman-Bloom and Associate Professor of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Law Sarah Lageson.
Eight law and journalism students presented the following cases on Thursday, April 16:
- Arvine Lacey, Manassas, Virginia, 1945 — presented by Eleanor Dash
- Moses Howard Jr., Tuskegee, Alabama, 1952 — presented by Malaika Jarvis
- Andrew Johnson, Chicago, Illinois, 1951 — presented by Johan Rodriguez Romero
- Lucius Meadows, Stockton, California, 1954 — presented by Kate Cressey
- Joseph Lawrence Burrell, Ripley, Tennessee, 1943 — presented by Frankie Moutier
- Thomas Reed, Petersburg, Virginia, 1945 — presented by Elizabeth Fretz
- Browning Tuggle, Hope, Arkansas, 1921 — presented by Michael Charla
- Charles Atkins, Davisboro, Georgia, 1922 — presented by Lauren Price
Thursday’s panelists were Burnham; Driskell; Kris Manjapra, Stearns Trustee Professor of History and Global Studies at Northeastern; Kevin Drakulich, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and co-Director of the Race and Justice Lab at Northeastern; Margaret Hahn-Dupont, Teaching Professor and Program Director of Legal Skills in Social Context; and Katheryn Russell Brown, Elmer V.H. and Eileen M. Brooks Trustee Professor of Crime, Law, and Justice at Northeastern.
Find more cases on the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive
About the Archive
The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive houses case files and documents for more than 1,000 cases of racial homicides in the Jim Crow South. Co-founded by Melissa Nobles, professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Margaret Burnham, CRRJ director and professor of law at Northeastern, these uncovered stories highlight how violence affected lives, defined legal rights and shaped politics between 1930 and 1954.
During the spring semester, each student was assigned cases originally investigated by Driskell through extensive research conducted via online newspaper databases, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and information gleaned through numerous FOIA requests. Beginning with minimal source material — in some instances, little more than a single mention in a long-forgotten news report — students spent the semester combing through death certificates, court records, coroners’ reports, and newspaper archives to reconstruct the circumstances of each death. Some students were ultimately able to connect with surviving family and community members willing to share their memories of their loved ones and what they know about the circumstances of their death. One student, Emily Glick, travelled to the location where police killed Harvey Anderson Kirby in Jacksonville, Florida, to witness first-hand the geographical and temporal relevance of this poignant locations to her reporting.
“We were impressed with the depth of the students’ research, and their growth from the first week of the semester until the end of the clinic,” said Gould. “Many of the students hope to continue with their research after the conclusion of the semester, which demonstrates the extent to which the students connected with the individuals whose stories they learned and their efforts to understand the racial violence leading to their deaths.”
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