CRRJ sponsors dynamic interdisciplinary research, fosters new pedagogies, and supports remedial practice on the national and community level.
Launched in 2007 by University Distinguished Professor Margaret Burnham and now directed by Professors Burnham and Rose Zoltek-Jick, CRRJ supports the academic and teaching projects of scholars within and beyond Northeastern University, and the restorative justice efforts in communities to honor this history.
In 2022, CRRJ launched the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive, a joint project with MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles. The archive is one of the most comprehensive digital records of racial homicides collected to date, and home to more than 1,000 case files. It is an invaluable resource for examining the extensive scale of killings in the Jim Crow South, from 1930 to 1954, offering users the opportunity to learn how violence affected people’s lives, defined legal rights and shaped politics during the Jim Crow era.
CRRJ and the Center for Law, Equity and Race
Established in November 2021 as a new Center of Excellence at the Northeastern University School of Law, the Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR) was created to strengthen and expand the phenomenal work of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project.
CLEAR aims to explore new ways to address the continuing challenges of racial injustice and social inequities, using the frameworks of innovative pedagogy, theoretical research, public policy development, and academic and community collaborations.
The Center for Excellence also supports the work of Northeastern Law’s Criminal Justice Task force (CJTF) as illustrated in this diagram..
Under the leadership of Margaret Burnham, CRRJ has been the Nation’s leading and pioneer academic center in the expanding field of historical injustice.
CLEAR will support this work, and expand its research and pedagogical agenda.
Staff
Associate Director
SENIOR STAFF ATTORNEY
Margaret Burnham is University Distinguished Professor of Law at Northeastern University, where she directs the Civil Rights & Restorative Justice Project and the Center for Equity, Race and Law. Her book on the topic of historical racial violence, titled By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners (Norton 2022) received wide acclaim.
Rose Zoltek-Jick is Associate Director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. She has taught at the School of Law for more than 40 years, specializing in criminal law and procedure, evidence, and law and psychiatry. Her academic writing has been in trauma and the statute of limitations.
Raymond Wilkes is Senior Staff Attorney at the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. He was previously a fellow a the tHarvard Slavery Remembrance Program, Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery Initiative. He leads CRRJ’s reparations programming and teaches the project’s spring clinic.
Project Archivist
Jay Driskell
Lead Historian
Staff Attorney and Program Director
Joy Zanghi is Project Archivist for the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive. She facilitates and manages the ongoing development of updates to the archive.
Jay Driskell, PhD, is the historian for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. He is the author of Schooling Jim Crow: the Fight for Atlanta’s Booker T. Washington High School and the Roots of Black Protest Politics (Virginia, 2014).
Alex Stein is Staff Attorney and Program Director for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. He teaches the Project’s Clinic as well as courses on the legacy of police violence. He leads CRRJ’s academic programming.
Meg Gould
Elizabeth Zitrin Justice Fellow
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE
Communications specialist
Meg Gould is the 2025-26 Elizabeth Zitrin Fellow at the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ). She teaches the Project’s Spring Clinic as well as directed study courses, and leads CRRJ’s Posthumous Exonerations project.
Lydia Beal is Research Associate at the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. They lead the project’s work with its descendant communities.
Catherine McGloin is the Communications Specialist for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ). She is responsible for the Project’s digital presence, publicity and media relations.
Jennifer True is the Program Manager for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ). She oversees operations and events planning for CRRJ, as well as facilities requests and budget management.
Advisors
Ifetayo Belle ‘10
Senior Staff Attorney
School Justice Project
Janeen Blake ’09
Sr. Director
Legal Counsel at Takeda
Tasmin Din ’10
Attorney
Morningside Technology Advisory LLC
Tara Dunn ‘17
Litigator
Todd & Weld LLP
Bayliss Fiddiman ’13
Director of Educational Equity, Senior Counsel, National Women’s Law Center
Hon. Geraldine Hines
Associate Justice (Ret.)
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Professor of Law, Northeastern University
Mary Nguyen ‘14
Assistant Attorney General
Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office
Melissa Nobles
Chancellor
Professor, Political Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rashida Richardson ’11
Professor of law, Northeastern university
Kaylie Simon ‘11
Deputy Public Defender
Contra Costa County, CA
Honorary Advisors
Rita L. Bender
Skellenger Bender P.S.
Fania Davis
Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director,
Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth
David J. Dennis
Algebra Project
Robert P. Moses
Algebra Project
Charles Ogletree Jr.
Jesse Climenko Professor of Law (Ret.)
Harvard Law School
Ruby Sales
Spirithouse Project
Hollis Watkins
Southern Echo
Affiliates
Northeastern University
· · ·
Professor of Journalism
Associate Professor of Communications Studies
Professor of Journalism
College of Social Sciences and Humanities
· · ·
Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies
Professor of Practice in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Professor of Africana Studies, History, and Digital Humanities
· · ·
Director, NuLawLab
Creative Director, Nulawlab and Stable Ground Boston
Professor of Law
Snell Library
· · ·
Digital Metadata & Ingest Supv, Digital Production Services
Digital Scholarship Developer, Digital Scholarship Group
Digital Production Coordinator, Digital Production Services
Head, Archives and Special Collections and University Archivist
Associate Director for Systems, Digital Scholarship Group
Project Archivist, Archives and Special Collections
Data Engineer, Digital Scholarship Group
Associate Director, Digital Scholarship Group and Digital Humanities Librarian
Head, Digital Production Services
Southern University Law Center
John Pierre
Chancellor
Ada Goodly
Research Collaborators
Jeffrey Adler
Professor of History
University of FLorida
David Cunningham
PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AT ST. LOUIS
Shytierra Gaston
PROFESSOR OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE & CRIMINOLOGY
GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY
Diane Harriford
PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY
VASSAR COLLEGE
Jennifer Llewellyn
PROFESSOR OF LAW
DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY
Monica Martinez
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN
Margaret M. Russell
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LAW
SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW
Geoff Ward
Professor of African and African-American Studies
Washington University at St. Louis
Nan Elizabeth Woodruff
Professor of History (Ret.)
Pennsylvania State University
CRRJ Staff News and Updates
70th Anniversary of Emmett Till’s Lynching: CRRJ Director on Cold Case Review Board, Release 6,500 Federal Records
Emmett Till was lynched on August 28, 1955. This year marks the 70th anniversary of his killing. Margaret Burnham serves on The Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, responsible for their release.
CRRJ Travels to Memphis for Memorial Honoring Lives Taken by Memphis Police Department
CRRJ joined a citywide memorial in Memphis honoring lives taken by the Memphis Police Department on June 21, 2025.
The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive presented at Digital Commonwealth’s annual conference
On April 29, 2025, Lydia Beal, CRRJ’s Research Associate, and Joy Zanghi, CRRJ’s Project Archivist, presented the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive (BNDA) at Digital Commonwealth’s 19th Annual Conference. Their presentation spoke to the title…
CLEAR’s program co-ordinator featured in Boston Globe NAACP convention retrospective
Charlotte Mathews-Nelson, program co-ordinator for Northeastern Law School’s Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR), was featured in an article published by the Boston Globe that looked back on 1982 NAACP Convention, the last time…
Center for Law, Equity and Race welcomes 2023-2024 Faculty Fellows
The Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR), welcomes four new Faculty Fellows. Zinaida Miller, Caleb Gayle, Adam Omar Hosein and Kris Manjapra will participate in the 2023-2024 fellowship. Gayle, Hosein and Manjapra will complete projects that will directly help to inform CRRJ’s reparative justice programs.
Senate confirmed CRRJ Director Margaret Burnham’s nomination to the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board
The US Senate confirmed Margaret Burnham, founder and director of CRRJ, as a member of the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board on February 17, 2022. Burnham was confirmed to the board…
Support
CRRJ's work is supported by individual donors and grants from The Carnegie Corporation, the Zitrin Foundation of San Francisco, The Ford Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and Northeastern University. Individual donations support our students’ field work.
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