02/09/2010
The Dallas Morning News
FBI takes new look at white men's
killing of East Texas black teen in 1955
FBI takes new look at white men's killing of East Texas black teen in 1955....
The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) conducts research, litigation, and supports policy initiatives on anti-civil rights violence in the United States and other miscarriages of justice of that period. Located at Northeastern University School of Law, CRRJ serves as a resource for scholars, policymakers, and organizers involved in various initiatives seeking justice for crimes of the civil rights era.
There is broad consensus in American political culture that the law enforcement system, particularly in the Deep South, failed to protect participants in the 1960s-era Civil Rights Movement from anti-civil rights violence. Communities across the country are grappling with how to make amends decades after these events. Some have turned to the criminal justice system. State and local prosecutors have brought fresh cases against the perpetrators of old hate crimes. Federal legislation has been proposed to enhance state investigations. A sense of urgency hangs over these efforts, for those most affected by the events are aging.
CRRJ focuses on these public policy and criminal justice initiatives. It conducts research into the nature and extent of anti-civil rights violence. CRRJ works with members of a diverse community – prosecutors, lawmakers, victims – that is seeking genuine reconciliation through legal proceedings, law reform, and private investigations. CRRJ assists these groups to assess and develop a range of policy approaches, including criminal prosecutions, truth and reconciliation proceedings, and legislative remedies. On the research front, CRRJ’s work aims to develop reliable data with which to analyze events of anti-civil rights violence and to support research into the history and current significance of anti-civil rights violence.
Featured Case-
John Earl ReeseJohn Earl Reese, a 16 year old black teenager, was shot to death on October 22, 1955 in East Texas. Reese's name is engraved on the Southern Poverty Law Center's memorial honoring forty men and women who lost their lives in the mid-twentieth century struggle for civil rights.
In 1989, Reese's cousin, Joyce Nelson Crockett, also a victim of the racial shooting that took young Reese's life in 1955 - attended the unveiling of the civil rights monument in Montgomery. But aside from the 1989 memorial event, scant attention had been paid to the Reese killing until CRRJ took up the case in 2009. CRRJ student Kaylie Simon and Attorney Janeen Blake recently visited East Texas to meet with Joyce Nelson Crockett and gather further information on the case. Their report can be found on Case Watch
House honors plan to name ship for Evers
Sun Herald
February 4, 2010
A tribute to slain Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers — a U.S. Navy supply ship named in his honor — got an additional boost from the U.S. House Thursday in a unanimous 426-0 vote “honoring the life and sacrifice” of Evers and congratulating the Navy for the gesture.
Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, announced the honor Oct. 9 at Jackson State University with Evers’ wife, Myrlie Evers-Williams, at his side.
Cold Civil Rights Cases to be Investigated
The Epoch Times
January 26, 2010
Some places in the United States have kept secrets for decades. The U.S. South, the former home of the oppressive Jim Crow laws and the heart of the civil rights movement, is one of them. In the past 20 years, some of the regions darkest truths have been slowly giving themselves up, largely through the work of intrepid investigative journalists......
King's FBI files may be opened to public
Clarion Ledger
January 15, 2010
U.S. Sen. John Kerry plans to introduce legislation next week that would pave the way for the release of thousands of FBI documents on the life and death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr...
5th Annual Conference of the Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement
Thursday, March 25
Location: Jackson State University E-Center
Civil Rights and Restorative Justice
Northeastern University
400 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
crrj@neu.edu
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