Hear Margaret Burnham, University Distinguished Professor of Law and founder of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice (CRRJ) Project, speak on "'A Hurting Thing': Capturing and Confronting the Legacies of Jim Crow."
An expert in civil and human rights, comparative constitutional rights, and international criminal law, Prof. Burnham has for 10 years investigated unsolved Jim Crow-era murders. She and her team have identified unknown victims, interviewed survivors, and facilitated community projects to restore justice across the South. Her talk will situate this work in our national conversation about the legacies of violence and the historical shortcomings of our criminal justice system, and in global movements to reclaim memories of past subordination and victimization.
In 2016, Prof. Burnham was selected for the competitive and prestigious Carnegie Fellows Program. Provided to just 33 recipients nationwide, the fellowship provides the “country’s most creative thinkers with grants of up to $200,000 each to support research on challenges to democracy and international order.” Prof. Burnham is using the funding to deepen and extend CRRJ’s work and research dedicated to seeking justice for crimes of the civil rights era.
Prof. Burnham began her career at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. In the 1970s, she represented civil rights and political activists. In 1977, she became the first African American woman to serve in the Massachusetts judiciary, when she joined the Boston Municipal Court bench as an associate justice. In 1982, she became partner in a Boston civil rights firm with an international human rights practice. In 1993, South African president Nelson Mandela appointed her to serve on an international human rights commission to investigate alleged human rights violations within the African National Congress. The commission was a precursor to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
A former fellow of the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Studies, Prof. Burnham has written extensively on contemporary legal and political issues.
