How to Use the CRRJ Archive


The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice (CRRJ) Archive is a database of the CRRJ project’s research on incidents of racially motivated violence targeting African Americans in the Jim Crow South between the years 1930–1954, the people known to be involved in these incidents, and the supporting documents referencing these events and individuals. The CRRJ Archive site includes ways for you to browse each of these different entity records, and also ways to search for specific people, incidents, or documents.

To explore the records for people, incidents, and documents, click the appropriate facet on the Search page. You can sort each list, and you can narrow them down using the facets on the left. You can also follow links to individual records for more detail.

You can search the CRRJ Archive using the search box on the home page, or visit the Search page by clicking on “Search” in the main navigation menu (which is accessible from anywhere on the site). The search will operate across all Archive records (of people, incidents, and document metadata) but not the full text of the documents themselves.

If you are a registered user and have logged into the CRRJ Archive site, you can download the full CRRJ Archive data set here. his data set includes all metadata records for people, incidents, and documents.

For more detailed information on using the site, visit our How to Use the Site page.


How to Cite CRRJ Materials

When citing CRRJ materials, the basic components of the citation are the title of the record or page you are citing, followed by the name of the CRRJ Archive, the URL, and the date you accessed the material. For instance:

“Killing of Buck Aaron in Alabama in 1950” CRRJ Archive. https://crrjarchive.org/incidents/419 (accessed August 16, 2022).

In some cases, where a specific author is credited with the material, the author’s name should also be included:

Wilkes, Raymond. “CRRJ Student Report” CRRJ Archive. https://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20251978 (accessed August 16, 2022).

For more details on citation formats for specific types of CRRJ materials, please visit the How to Cite page. Please contact the CRRJ Archive at crrjarchive@northeastern.edu if you have specific questions about reusing or republishing data or content from the Archive.


How to Request Documents

Registered users can download CRRJ data sets from the Data Download page. If you are not a registered user but would like to request a CRRJ data set, please contact us at crrjarchive@northeastern.edu.

Researchers or family members may request access to restricted records by contacting crrjarchive@northeastern.edu. All requests will be reviewed for relevance and feasibility.

For more information on requesting documents, visit the How to Request Documents page.