Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project Archives

Katie Sandson, Program Director, Racial Redress and Reparations Lab at Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Northeastern’s Racial Redress and Reparations Lab is creating a tool for lawmakers to pursue racial redress

The recent release of a California task force’s reparations report is a major step forward for reparations, and Katie Sandson, program director for the Racial Redress and Reparations Lab, wants to make sure more U.S. communities are ready to take that step toward justice.

by Cody Mello-Klein June 15, 2022

Northeastern's annual observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday will examine voting rights. A high-stakes legislative chess match is taking place on Capitol Hill over the issue. Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA via AP Images

Voting rights take center stage on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Nearly six decades after King lobbied for the rights of Black people to cast a vote, the issue of voting rights returns to command the nation’s attention. Northeastern’s MLK observance will feature a keynote address by a senior Justice Department attorney on the steps the agency is taking to protect and promote the right to vote.

by Peter Ramjug January 13, 2022

What does justice look like for those exonerated after decades? A case for Black reparations

A recent string of high-profile exonerations, including those of Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, two men wrongfully convicted in the 1966 killing of Malcolm X, has many asking the question: What is justice for people who have been failed by the criminal system?

by Tanner Stening December 7, 2021

Biden nominates civil rights legend Margaret Burnham for federal Civil Rights cold case review board

President Joe Biden has nominated Northeastern law scholar and renowned civil rights lawyer Margaret Burnham to serve on a new board that will make it easier to access the records of unsolved murders of Black Americans during the Civil Rights era—and possibly solve some of the lingering crimes.

by Molly Callahan June 16, 2021

A crowd gathers at George Floyd Square after a guilty verdict was announced at the trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin.

Call for action: The guilty verdicts in Derek Chauvin’s trial were just the beginning

Verdicts serve “as a reminder of how much further we have to travel,” says president Joseph E. Aoun. “We can’t be mere spectators,” when it comes to confronting racial injustice, says Margaret Burnham, university distinguished professor of law at Northeastern. She and Richard O’Bryant, director of the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute, urge people to stay engaged in the fight for justice and police accountability.

by Molly Callahan April 22, 2021

Philonise Floyd, Attorney Ben Crump and the Rev. Al Sharpton courtroom celebrate Chauvin verdict.

Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict is a step toward justice and police reform–but it’s not the end of racism in the US

Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck until he died, was found guilty of all three counts related to Floyd’s murder on Tuesday, in a case that “bucks up against 200 years of history in a way that is enormously refreshing but also deeply informative,” said Margaret Burnham, university distinguished professor of law at Northeastern.

by Molly Callahan April 20, 2021

Photo by Ruby Wallau/Northeastern University

Close out the semester with these virtual events

Examine the comparative history of post-slavery liberation. Pitch an entrepreneurial idea. Discuss the role of design in creating equitable infrastructure. These events and more are on the schedule for the end of April.

by Alison Booth April 16, 2021

President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Minden-Tahoe Airport in Minden, Nev. on Sept. 12, 2020. AP Photo by Andrew Harnik

It may have come and gone, but the 1776 Commission was no fluke

Former President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission may not have lasted long—it was both created and dismantled by executive orders two months apart by two different administrations—but its existence is situated within a long history of reinterpreting the history of slavery in the U.S., say two Northeastern scholars of civil rights and race.

by Molly Callahan February 16, 2021

Reparations ‘essential’ to addressing systemic racial injustice, speakers say

Lurking behind systems from enslavement to segregation, from redlining to police violence, is a “brutal logic” from which the “lives and families of African Americans are subject to the acquisition by people to enrich themselves,” said author Ta-Nehisi Coates during a daylong conference hosted by Northeastern’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project and the Africana Studies Program that also included commentary from noted activist Angela Y. Davis and others, as well as testimony from the descendants of lynching victims.

by Molly Callahan November 17, 2020

Press clipping collage by Northeastern University

Let’s talk about reparations for the families of lynching victims

Northeastern will host writer and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates and civil rights icon Angela Davis for a conference on reparations for the descendants of lynching victims. The historic event will take place at a time when public officials across the country are making a renewed effort to repair past wrongs within their communities, says Margaret Burnham, university distinguished professor of law.

by Khalida Sarwari November 15, 2020

Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project