LIVE from NYPL: Reconstructing the Violence of Jim Crow with Margaret A. Burnham and Saidiya Hartman

Date and Time
October 20, 2022
Event Details

Burnham discusses her new book, By Hands Now Known, which unearths Jim Crow’s “forgotten history of racially motivated homicides” and their enduring legacy in today’s legal and political structures.


By Hands Now Known Cover

Margaret A. Burnham is the founding director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University, which charts the systematic failure of law enforcement systems, particularly in the Deep South, to protect African American citizens from widespread racial terror from the end of the Civil War through the Civil Rights era. Her new book, By Hands Now Known, continues that work, painting “a more comprehensive and accurate picture” of the “multifaceted systems of racial injustice,” that have shaped “the grim history of anti-Black violence in the Jim Crow South.”

Burnahm speaks with Saidiya Hartman about that history, and discusses “21st-century insights about how states should reckon with historical injustices” and “how amends should be made in the present to address long-buried historical harms.”

To join the event in-person | Please be sure to register for an In-Person Ticket. Doors will open 30 minutes before the program begins. For free events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Priority will be given to those who have registered in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. All registered seats are released shortly before start time, and seats may become available at that time. A standby line will form 30 minutes before the program.

To join the livestream | A livestream of this event will be available on this NYPL event page. To receive an email reminder shortly in advance of the event, please be sure to register! If you encounter any issues, please join us on NYPL's YouTube channel.


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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Margaret A. Burnham is the founding director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University, and has been a staffer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, civil rights lawyer, defense attorney, and judge. She was nominated by President Biden to serve on the Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Saidiya Hartman is the author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, and Scenes of Subjection. A MacArthur Genius Fellow, she has been a Guggenheim Fellow, Cullman Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar. In addition to her books, she has published articles in journals such as South Atlantic Quarterly, Brick, Small Axe, Callaloo, Bomb, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. She is a professor at Columbia University and lives in New York.


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ACCESSIBILITY NOTES

In-Person

  • Assistive listening devices and/or hearing loops are available at the venue.
  • You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template.
  • This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs.

Livestream

  • Captions and a transcript will be provided.
  • Media used over the course of the conversation will be accompanied by alt text and/or audio description.
  • You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template.

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This program is made possible by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).