Work-Study Support for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, Northeastern University School of Law, (Boston, MA)

Posted January 25, 2024

About this opportunity:

The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) is seeking an undergraduate student for
part-time assistance integrating CRRJ’s existing oral interviews into the Burnham-Nobles Digital
Archive. This position will report to Professor Margaret Burnham, the founder and director of the project, and the CRRJ Research Associate, Lydia Beal.
CRRJ documents racially motivated killings in the Jim Crow South and aims to identify pathways
for redress. To date, CRRJ has successfully published approximately 13,000 records to the Burnham
Nobles Digital Archive, including victim portraits, death certificates, newspaper clippings, law
enforcement records, advocacy group reports, military records, and more. This primary responsibility of this position, however, is to integrate the oral interviews with the families and communities of the victims into the next release of the Digital Archive. This requires reviewing CRRJ’s internal files to quantify existing interviews, standardizing their format and accompanying published language, and verifying and attaining release materials from interviewees.

Qualifications:

This part-time work-study candidate must be resourceful and prepared to communicate with living descendants of deceased victims of racial violence. Informed by the field of communications and in collaboration with CRRJ’s staff, this candidate must be highly motivated, sensitive to violence, organized, and detail oriented. This candidate must have excellent communication and writing skills, experience with Microsoft Office applications – Word, Excel, etc.—and familiarity with programs such as Adobe Acrobat, Clio, and Airtable. The majority of assigned work will be conducted during standard business hours.

Key Responsibilities:

• Review and catalogue oral interviews with families and communities of victims.
• Catalog and list all oral interviews within the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project.
• Identify interviews lacking necessary releases and verify and obtain release materials from
  interviewees.
• Standardize interview and interview release formats for consistency.
• Develop an introduction for the collection.
• Draft descriptive text for each interview, enhancing context and relevance for the Archive’s
  metadata.
• Attend regular meetings with Lydia Beal and be prepared to report on assigned tasks.
• Practice extreme sensitivity when working with families and communities of the deceased.

Position Type:
NUSL Work Study
Part-time (10hrs/week)

Additional Information
Northeastern University is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Educational Institution and
Employer, Title IX University. Northeastern University particularly welcomes applications from
minorities, women and persons with disabilities. Northeastern University is an E‐Verify Employer.

How to Apply

To apply, send a brief letter of interest, a resume, and two references to Jennifer True, CRRJ Project
Manager, at [email protected].