Charlotte M. Nelson poses for a portrait by City Hall on July 30, 2018. Photo by Adam Glanzman/Northeastern University Ms. Charlotte Mathews-Nelson, program coordinator for the Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR),…
William White, a Black father of five, was killed in 1948 in St. Louis, MO. A Northeastern Law student recently researched his death at the hands of two white men, for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project’s spring clinic.
In April 2023, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board will review a petition for posthumous clemency filed by attorneys with the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) and Northwestern School of Law’s Center…
We sit down with Gina Nortonsmith, project archivist for the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive, who is helping to collect stories of racial violence in the Jim Crow era so that they can be told accurately and in full.
On August 31, 2021, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam granted posthumous pardons to seven Black men: Joe Henry Hampton, Frank Hairston Jr., Booker T. Millner, Howard Lee Hairston, Francis DeSales Grayson, John Clabon Taylor,…
On the afternoon of February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery went out for a jog. On the night of February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin went out for a walk. As we all know, they…
Cover Photo: John Lewis at the March on Washington in 1963. Getty Images. . . . We are tired. We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people…
Photo credit: Demonstrators protest police brutality at the White House, March 12, 1965. (from Origins at OSU). For those who do not know our history well, this past week might seem unparalleled. A public…
Photo: “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” (MPI/Getty Images) The term lynching is not a metaphor. It doesn’t apply to every heinous racist assault against black people. But it’s also true that the term…
It is now a familiar sight to almost anyone reading this; the torchlit procession marching, with the bright orange glow piercing the night sky. * * * * On September 19, 1947, a…
I’ve been thinking a great deal about the need for sincere apologies for historic racial violence and apologies by perpetrators of sexual assault and harassment. In both contexts, the litigious culture of the…
If it wasn’t for the rain that doused the burning fuses, my synagogue would be no longer. In 1943 my grandfather celebrated his Bar-Mitzvah at Temple Beth-El in Birmingham, Alabama. He opened his speech with…
On this eve of the New Year, we are all poised to look back at the past year and forward to the one ahead. In the work we do at the Civil Rights and…
CRRJ: What do you seek to accomplish with your museum? SW: I hope that people will continue to learn how museums have been used to remember the past, and go into the future…
Mobile, Alabama, is a city with an abundance of statuary. Scattered around the perimeter of the city’s center, there are no fewer than a dozen monuments of bronze, marble, and granite commemorating towering…
Her name was Niece Brown. Niece Brown was 74-years-old when she was killed by Officer George D. Booker. Niece Brown was at home. Niece Brown didn’t allegedly have a weapon or a toy…
Media commentary to the contrary notwithstanding, Senator-Elect Doug Jones’ innovative prosecutorial work on the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing was not his only contribution to the civil rights agenda, although he is best…
On June 5, 1964, a few weeks before the murder of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman in Neshoba, I sent my mother a letter from Jackson, Mississippi. With other staff members…