Henry Andrews and Issac Mayo, both World War II veterans, were shot and killed by police officers, in North Carolina, in 1947. The circumstances remain unclear, as descendants search for answers and fight to have their relatives’ stories remembered.
The DOJ’s investigation found that “Memphis police officers regularly violate the rights of the people.” But the history of racial discrimination and the use of excessive force by MPD can be traced far earlier than the death of Tyre Nichols. It is the outcome of decades of impunity enjoyed by police who have ended Black lives without suffering any legal consequences.
Jordan Neely’s tragic death at the hands of a private citizen is a familiar story, one told many times in the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive in the cases of racially-motivated homicide on public conveyances in the Jim Crow South.
A case recently released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) under the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act, and initially investigated by CRRJ’s historian Dr. Jay Driskell, exposes the historical continuum that exists between the treatment of African Americans in public spaces in the twentieth century, and Christian Cooper’s experience in 2020.
The Madness, released on Netflix, November 28, 2024, is not based on a true story, although the death, danger and duplicity Daniels faces could have come from one of the many case files on Jim-Crow era violence contained in the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive.
The 2020 presidential election triggered a wave of concerns and legislation regarding election integrity, voter suppression and the security of American democracy. Over the last four years, states including Florida, Texas, Georgia and…
Filmed on location in rural Louisiana, featuring a corrupt local police force and a racist sheriff (Don Johnson) viewers may wonder if the recently released thriller Rebel Ridge is based on a true…
In the heart of the Black Belt, Wilcox County, Alabama, in 1953, Della’s Place was the spot for a late-night meal and some jukebox music once the bars in town had closed. The…
This Indigenous Peoples Day, we remember Lincoln McGeisey and Palmer Sampson, and others still unnamed, even as we appreciate that the violent subjugation of Native communities has taken many forms.
This correspondence with Thurgood Marshall, civil-rights attorney, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund and Supreme Court justice, housed in the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive, reveals Marshall’s integrated approach to advocacy.
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…
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…