Margaret Burnham receives $1 million endowed chair ahead of Hall of Fame induction
Northeastern University has announced a new visiting professorship in civil rights and a November 9 induction into the Massachusetts Women's Hall of Fame for the retiring distinguished professor.
By Talia Bennett ·
Margaret Burnham, a retiring Northeastern University distinguished professor of law, will be inducted into the Massachusetts Women's Hall of Fame on Nov. 9. She is part of the first group of living inductees. The law school simultaneously announced a $1 million commitment to create the Margaret Burnham endowed visiting professorship in civil rights. These honors recognize her two decades of teaching and research on race and criminal justice.
Burnham joined the law faculty in 2002. Before arriving in Boston, she built a career as a civil rights lawyer and activist. She worked for the NAACP and served as the first Black woman to serve as a judge in Massachusetts. In 1965, while a student at Tougaloo College, she was arrested in Jackson, Miss., for encouraging citizens to vote. She recalled that two Black women lawyers secured her quick release from jail.
Her academic work centered on the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, or CRRJ. This program investigated racially motivated violence during the Jim Crow era. The project documented over 1,000 cases of racial homicides and anti-civil rights violence. This archive is now known as the Burnham-Nobles Archive. Melissa Nobles, who co-founded the archive and now serves as chancellor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the work aimed to show how the law failed to protect individuals.
Burnham's expertise led to appointments with a precursor to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She also served on a research team for the city of Boston's Reparations Task Force. She retired during the summer after 25 years at Northeastern. President Joseph E. Aoun described her as a towering legal scholar who shaped the university's pursuit of justice.
Former students cite her mentorship as a primary legacy. Tara Dunn Jackson, a law graduate and CRRJ advisory board member, credited the project with awakening her understanding of the legal system. Alexa Mills, a journalism graduate, called Burnham the single best professor she had. Mills published investigations into military victims of racial violence in major newspapers.
Kaylie Simon, a 2011 graduate, worked with Burnham on the restorative justice aspect of the program. Simon investigated the 1955 drive-by shooting death of John Earl Reese in Texas. During a trip to meet Reese's cousin, Joyce Faye Nelson-Crockett, Burnham spent hours listening to Nelson-Crockett discuss her watermelons and large freezer. Simon said Burnham demonstrated deep human care alongside her legal expertise.
As she packed her office in Cargill Hall this summer, Burnham kept file folders filled with letters and thank-you notes from students. She compared the process to Swedish death cleaning. She kept every note from every student who ever wrote to her.
