The Civil Rights & Restorative Justice Project, based at Northeastern University School of Law (CRRJ), is an academic program documenting historical anti-Black racial violence and the associated flaws and failures of the criminal justice system, and pursuing projects of redress. Founded in 2007 by legal scholar Margaret Burnham, CRRJ’s research initiatives recover, render visible, and contextualize this history, the legacy of which is implicated in contemporary patterns of violence and inequality. CRRJ’s project is unique in its combination of rigorous scholarship and sustained community engagement. While its research pertains to data retrieval, preservation, and interpretation, CRRJ also collaborates with families and communities to address projects of repair. CRRJ pursues opportunities for public dialogue between the state entities–particularly legal institutions–responsible for the wrongs and those harmed, with a view to generating shared understandings of the injustices, based on the documents as well as on community memory, and establishing meaningful redress.
