The Civil Rights Restorative Justice Project is an initiative by the

Northeastern University School of Law Northeastern University School of Law (NUSL) is the law school of Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded as an evening program to meet the needs of its local community, NUSL is nationally recognized for its cooperative legal ...

in Boston, Massachusetts, to document every racially motivated killing in the

American South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

between 1930 and 1970. The project aims to serve as a resource for scholars, policymakers, and organizers involved in various initiatives seeking justice for crimes of the civil rights era. CRRJ focuses on research, particularly concerning

cold case A cold case is a crime, or a suspected crime, that has not yet been fully resolved and is not the subject of a current criminal investigation, but for which new information could emerge from new witness testimony, re-examined archives, new or r ...

s, and supports policy initiatives on anti-civil rights violence, such as various remediation efforts including criminal and civil prosecutions, truth and reconciliation proceedings, and legislative remedies.

Sample cases

In 2008 the Project represented Thomas Moore and Thelma Collins, family of

Charles Eddie Moore ''Mississippi Cold Case'' is a 2007 feature documentary produced by David Ridgen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about the Ku Klux Klan murders of two 19-year-old black men, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, in Southwest Mississ ...

and Henry Hezekiah Dee, in their civil suit against Franklin County, Mississippi. They charged that its law enforcement had been complicit in the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...

kidnappings and murders of their relatives on May 2, 1964. In prosecution of what was known as the 2007

Mississippi Cold Case ''Mississippi Cold Case'' is a 2007 feature documentary produced by David Ridgen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about the Ku Klux Klan murders of two 19-year-old black men, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, in Southwest Mississ ...

, James Ford Seale was convicted in federal court for these deaths. The county settled with Moore and Collins in June 2010 for an undisclosed amount."The Dee and Moore Case"
, CRRJ, Northeastern University, 2015 In December 2014, the Project successfully helped to vacate the conviction of George Stinney of Alcolu, South Carolina, who at age 14 was the youngest person in United States history to have been executed. He had been convicted of murdering two white girls by an

all-white jury Racial discrimination in jury selection is specifically prohibited by law in many jurisdictions throughout the world. In the United States, it has been defined through a series of judicial decisions. However, juries composed solely of one racial ...

in a brief trial. He was deprived of defense counsel and not allowed to see his parents until after the trial. Because of numerous constitutional abuses during his prosecution and trial, the court vacated his conviction. In 2016 CRRJP's Tara Dunn and Ariel Goeun Lee reported on the full account of their investigation into the notorious 1947 death of Henry "Peg" Gilbert while held in the

Harris County, Georgia Harris County is a county located in the west-central portion of the U.S. state of Georgia; its western border with the state of Alabama is formed by the Chattahoochee River. As of the 2020 census, the population was 34,668. The county seat i ...

jail. This took place in the county seat of

Hamilton Hamilton may refer to: People * Hamilton (name), a common British surname and occasional given name, usually of Scottish origin, including a list of persons with the surname ** The Duke of Hamilton, the premier peer of Scotland ** Lord Hamilto ...

, on May 23, 1947. Gilbert was a prosperous, 42-year-old, married African-American farmer and father of four. He was arrested without a warrant, on wrongful charges of harboring a black fugitive who had shot a white man in Troup County. (Harris County had no jurisdiction there.) Hamilton Police Chief William H. Buchanan had claimed he shot Gilbert in self-defense. But, "When morticians examined the dead man, they found that bones all over Gilbert’s body had been crushed. His skull was shattered, one of his legs was broken, and he suffered five gunshot wounds." After her husband's funeral, Mae Henry Gilbert was prosecuted on the same charges in Harris County but was successfully defended by her counsel, white attorney Daniel Duke, who got the charges dropped.

References

External links

* * {{YouTube , id= XaCax-yvCn4 , title= "The Trouble I've Seen" - Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project Restorative justice Northeastern University History of African-American civil rights

Sample cases

See also

References

External links