The University of Buffalo Graduate School of Education’s magazine recently published a profile about Gina Nortonsmith, the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive’s project archivist and GSE alumna.
“I hope that the events presented in the archive begin to be folded into the understanding of the 20th-century history of the United States because I don’t think you can understand what is currently happening in a place unless you understand the impact of the violence and the trauma that resulted in these events—not just to the people this happened to or their families—but to the whole community who witnessed perpetrators of targeted violence not be subject to the justice system,” said Nortonsmith, MS ’19, in a recent interview with the magazine’s journalist Danielle Legare.
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.