Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive

Bringing It All Together: Methods for Cataloging News Articles for the BNDA Version 2.0

Since its initial launch in September 2022, the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive (BNDA) has established itself as one of the most comprehensive digital records of racial homicides collected to date. This blog series aims to highlight the work of the archivists on the BNDA team and their experiences preparing for the launch of BNDA Version 2.0. You can read more about the Version 2.0 update in Gathering the Red Record: A Two-Day Convening on Linking Racial Violence Archives.

Methods Overview

The first thing I have to say about the archival work methods for cataloging news articles at the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project’s BNDA is that they are a team effort. The workflow structure is maintained through shared instructions, templates, the data dictionary, and a responsive, organized supervising team.

All of the archives assistant work is digital. Archives assistants receive batches of news articles to catalog in the form of spreadsheets with links to images of the original newspaper articles stored in the Digital Repository Service. We then verify those articles against information we currently have and complete standardized fields for the information we want supplied. If we encounter a question about the records that we can’t answer with assurance, we flag it to be reviewed by either our supervisors or the legal team.

When completed, those standardized spreadsheets are reviewed by the supervising team and transformed into a format compatible for inclusion in the BNDA. Having multiple team members verify information improves the accuracy of the records and makes for sustainable collections processing practices.

Our goal is to add as much accurate and data-verified cataloged information as possible in order to provide supporting evidence of each incident, case, and victim identifier. These standardized identifiers, as well as authorized names for each unique individual, allow the team to take advantage of the relational-based search capability of the Airtable database. Not only does this system help us make better cataloged records, it allows for more retrievable information for future research.

Examples in the Records

Washington Sniper Victims
One example of data verification is to identify the victim(s) present in a news article whenever possible, even when minimal information is present. Breaking news articles often lack details. Names can be absent or incorrect, or focus on the perpetrator of the crime rather than the victim. One strategy I find helpful is to work by victim-subject, going through batches of news articles that are all related to one victim or group of victims. This allows me to glean patterns of context clues that allow for victim identification even if the victim is unnamed.

Newspaper clipping with the headline "Baffled D.C. Police Sift Tangled Clues In Hunt for Sniper"
News article describing the ongoing search for the perpetrator and victims in the D. C. sniper case. Evening star. Washington, D.C.: October 16, 1940.
List of metadata tied to an article titled "Evening Star. Washington, D.C.: October 16, 1940. Baffled D.C. Police Sift Tangled Clues in Hunt for Sniper
Cataloging metadata for the news article (left).

I found this strategy particularly helpful when working with a case related to a serial sniper who murdered multiple victims in Washington, D.C., in 1940. Three victims identified over the months of press coverage were Hylan McClaine, Lushion Sam Banks, and Theodore I. Goffney, but the chronological order of their murders was not shared. Press coverage of the sniper continued into the 1960s, long after the trial, with inconsistent reference to the victims. At the BNDA, we can link the victim names at the forefront of these articles in our catalog, centering the narrative around the victims rather than the perpetrator.

Bryant Family Murder
The research crucial work that aids in the cataloging effort is also on display in the case of the 1932 Bryant family murder. The news coverage of the tragic murder of the Bryant family was sometimes unclear about which family members survived and which were killed in the horrible robbery, torture, and death by arson. Some articles appeared sympathetic to the murderers and provided little to no details on the victims.

Our Airtable database supports a field for notes written by Project Historian Jay Driskell when they are available. Through Jay’s notes, I could confirm with certainty that the father and son, Lewis and Ozola Bryant, were murdered. The mother, Missouri Bryant, survived. The more detailed news articles corroborated these facts. The Bryant murder trial also stands out as a case that upheld the murder charges against a white killer despite appeals up to the Missouri State Supreme Court.

A screenshot titled "Ozola Bryant and Lewis Bryant in Mississippi in 1932" with a case summary and other categories of metadata
The BNDA incident page for the killing of Ozola and Lewis Bryant

Given the graphic nature of the emotional events and the polarized reporting, I was grateful to have ready, retrievable access to previous work to clarify the Bryant family’s story in order to help me accurately represent the family in the cataloged work. I also benefitted from the concurrent work of another archives assistant and the support of my supervisor, Project Archivist Joy Zanghi.

These cases and many more are available in BNDA Version 2.0 and you can browse the current version now. I had the privilege of working with archival methods developed over the past 18 years of the project, taking into account the humanity of the sensitive subject matter. The final result is that the CRRJ developed an archival format with the BNDA that allows for the data within it to be scalable, buildable, and retrievable for the future.

CRRJ Archives Assistant Stephanie Bennett Rahmat (she/her/hers) has 17 years of experience working with historic and cultural heritage resources throughout the U.S. She completed her Master of Library and Information Science degree at Simmons University in 2021, with a focus on Archives Management and Cultural Heritage. She came to work in the archives and libraries after a career in North American archaeology.

What’s in a Name? Improving Research Accessibility While Honoring Victims of Racial Violence

When I first began my role as an archives assistant for the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive (BNDA), I was struck by the scale of the work before me. Around 2,000 victims of racial violence were represented in the data. My job was to catalog and contextualize the archival materials detailing their stories to ensure documents were easily discoverable within the archive. From the outset, I realized that names—how they are recorded, preserved, and made searchable—would be integral to this work.

As the archives assistant, cataloging meant creating detailed item-level records using the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice (CRRJ) Project’s data management system, Airtable, a platform built on data meticulously gathered by CRRJ staff. To verify and recover victims’ names, researchers cross-referenced varying documents—death certificates, draft cards, court records, newspaper articles, correspondence, and advocacy group materials—and developed a clear methodology, described in this narrative on the BNDA website, to address conflicting information across sources.

Newspaper clipping with the headline "Murder Unpunished." The first line reads "Three weeks ago, Mr. and Mrs. Roger Malcolm, Mr. and Mrs. George Dorsey were forcibly removed from a car early in the evening of August 1, 1946 and shot down in cold blood by an unmasked mob just outside of Monroe, Georgia."
News article from the New York Amsterdam News highlighting the writing convention of naming women only in relation to their husbands. The file can be access in the Digital Repository Service.

To reflect the complexity that accompanied names, each case record includes an authoritative name (the verified full name established by researchers), along with fields for given name, family name, and alternate names. On the public-facing archive, this structure allows users to locate victims not only by their correct name, but also by common misspellings, nicknames, or other recorded versions. In this way, the system both acknowledges historical inconsistencies and restores the victim’s true identity.

Creating cataloging records that fed into this framework, I strove to ensure that materials remained discoverable while centering the dignity of each individual. However, much of the material I worked with—primarily newspaper articles—posed significant challenges. Victims were often not named at all, but instead referred to by racial epithets, such as “The Negro.” Even when names were used, they were frequently misspelled or misreported. Women were commonly identified only in relation to their husbands, while derogatory nicknames could replace real names entirely.

A single victim may appear in the historical record under multiple conflicting names. For example, Levi George, a victim most frequently called “Texas Red” in newspapers, was also referred to as Levi Joy or Red Williams. Including all three of these alternate names as metadata allows researchers to locate Levi’s case using names they are more likely to come across, while also reclaiming his full identity, by emphasizing his true name—Levi George—in the record.

Screenshot of Levi George's page from the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive. The first two items in the profile read "Name: Levi George" and "Name - alternate: Levi Joy, Red Williams, Texas Red"
Levi George’s record lists all four names by which he is referred. Profile available in the BNDA.

These situations required both flexibility and creativity. When a news article about a violent incident omitted a victim’s name entirely but mentioned the date and location, I could often identify the individual by filtering Airtable using those data points. From there, I would catalog the resource appropriately, connecting it to the victim’s record so that future researchers could access it even if the name never explicitly appeared in the text itself.

Newspaper clipping headlined "He's 'Texas Red.'" It features mug shots from the front and side of a Black man holding a prison number. The caption identifies him as both Levi George and "Texas Red."
Levi George, a victim of racial violence, is identified by two names in this photo caption. Further dehumanizing the victim is the use of an old mugshot to announce his murder. Record available in the DRS.

Names also shaped the way resources were titled and summarized. For newspaper articles, the notes field often followed a formula: [Resource type] + [brief description of incident] + [victim name]. This is how, for instance, the abstract “News article from the Atlanta Daily World about the shooting of Levi George” was generated. Titles for advocacy records, lacking the same copyright restrictions as newspaper articles, followed a somewhat similar format: [Resource type] + [organization name] : [victim name]. This is how another resource became titled, “Legal files from the NAACP : Levi George.” Choosing to prioritize the victim’s name, rather than the perpetrator’s, when titling and describing resources was a conscious decision—a subtle yet meaningful reversal of the dehumanizing tendencies found in many historical documents.

Over time, I came to see cataloging records and naming as both technical functions and ethical responsibilities. Each name recovered or connected to a resource served a dual purpose: improving research and digital access, while also restoring the humanity to someone who had once been denied it. I am grateful to have contributed to this work and proud to be part of a project that sees names not simply as data points, but as acts of remembrance and justice.

You can read more about the Version 2 Update of the BNDA in Gathering the Red Record: A Two-Day Convening on Linking Racial Violence Archives.

Annie Ross (she/her/hers) served as an archives assistant for the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive. She completed her Master of Library and Information Science degree with a concentration in Archives Management from Simmons University in 2022 and has worked on a range of archival and metadata projects in academic and cultural heritage settings.

Gathering the Red Record: A Two-Day Convening on Linking Racial Violence Archives

Last month, an interdisciplinary group of over 100 archivists, legal professionals, and historians gathered at Northeastern University’s Snell Library for Gathering the Red Record: Linking Racial Violence Archives. Presented by the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) and the Northeastern University Library, the two-day convening served to highlight the Version 2.0 update of the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive (BNDA), the launch of a new research project, and the development of its first white paper.

A smiling woman stands behind a podium holding a piece of paper
Gina Nortonsmith, the African American history archivist at Northeastern University. Photo courtesy of Michael Manning.

The Racial Violence Interoperability White Paper Project will serve as a roadmap exploring the possibility of a national project linking various collections of racial violence into a united, interoperable dataset.

Simultaneously a celebration, a launch, and a call to action, Gathering the Red Record highlighted the newest achievements of the BNDA and asked participants for their input and feedback to design future shared goals.

On the first day of the conference, panelists and attendees were introduced to the extensive expansion of the BNDA and the restorative justice milestones the CRRJ have achieved. Since its initial launch in 2022, the BNDA has established itself as one of the most comprehensive digital records of racially motivated homicides collected to date. The archive serves as an open-source repository and database dedicated to identifying, classifying, and providing documentation on anti-Black killings the mid-20th century South. Version 2.0 introduces 290 new victims to the database, along with their corresponding case files, which resulted in over 5,000 new records becoming publicly available. In addition to a massive expansion in records available, Version 2.0 expands the geographic scope of the archive, adding Maryland, Delaware, Washington D.C., Missouri, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, and Oklahoma to the original 11 formerly Confederate states.

Two women sit in front of a large screen. One is holding a microphone and speaking
Co-founder of the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive Melissa Nobles and Monica Martinez, project lead for Mapping Violence, speak on The Road to Interoperability White Paper Project. Photo courtesy of Michael Manning.

Day two of the event was dedicated to introducing attendees to The Racial Violence Interoperability White Paper Project and asking for feedback, putting researchers, librarians, and archivists who document historical violence into conversation. Participants were given an early draft, which included instructions on how a national digital project might emerge. Developed in collaboration with eight similar ‘sister’ projects, the paper outlines strategies for aligning data dictionaries, establishing governance, securing funding, and ensuring ethical hosting. Participants then divided into working groups to address project planning and data collection, technology alignment, funding and resources, and federal initiatives on cold case records. The day concluded with conference attendees engaging in guided discussions that explored the feasibility of a national project as described in the White Paper.

As the conference finished, participants were left with possibilities for new collaborations, ideas for funding resources, project design suggestions, and digital publishing possibilities. The fruitful discussions also continue to contribute to the White Paper Project, which is scheduled to be finalized in September.

Gina Nortonsmith Discusses Work with CRRJ Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive in NEA Newsletter Article

Gina Nortonsmith, a smiling woman with short hair and glasses
Gina Nortonsmith

Northeastern University African American History Archivist Gina Nortonsmith had an extensive article published in the January 2024 issues of the New England Archivists Newsletter, discussing her work with the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project’s Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive.

Nortonsmith was originally hired as a Project Archivist for the CRRJ, tasked with compiling anti-Black homicide case records from the Jim Crow era into a collection to allow for accessibility and trend study by researchers. In the article, she discusses her work and the overarching goals of both representing the work of the CRRJ while also maintaining “the dignity and respect for victims and their families.”

To do this, Nortonsmith and the rest of the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive team centralized the victims’ lives and stories, not just the crime that was committed against them. In her article, she discusses approaching each record as referring to a real person and not an abstract notion. Often that included discovering and using victims’ real names, instead of alternate names or misspellings that are common in the records.

“We wanted to build an archive which illuminated CRRJ’s work and that led us to put the victim and their story foremost in arrangement, description, and access,” Nortonsmith wrote.

The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archives contains investigative records from federal and local entities as well as records from advocacy groups and letters from family and community members advocating for justice. They also included death certificates, newspaper articles, photos, and more. Taken together, these records provide a complete story of the prevalence of anti-Black violence and murder in the Jim Crow South from 1930-1954 and the failures of the justice system to solve these crimes and punish the perpetrators.

As archivists, Nortonsmith and her team made sure these records were catalogued and organized in a way that included and highlighted all parts of the victims’ life and story. Working with such subject matter was difficult, but “knowing that we were helping to bring these stories forward once again went a long way toward keeping us moving forward,” Nortonsmith wrote.

The January issue of the New England Archivists Newsletter is currently available for subscription-holders. Past issues are freely available on their website.

Library Staff Work with CRRJ to Investigate and Make Accessible 1,000 Records of Racial Homicides in Jim Crow South in New Burnham-Nobles Archive

Last week’s release of the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive by the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) was a culmination of years of work by both the Northeastern University School of Law and by the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

Black and white image of a Black man wearing a hat and sitting on an old car. Text on the photo reads "Caleb "Picky Pie" Hill 28 Son, Brother, Father, Husband, Irvington Georgia"
Library staff have worked to digitize photos and records of racially motivated homicides in the Jim Crow South, like that of Caleb Hill, Jr., who was murdered by two white men in Georgia in 1949, with the help of local police. The killers were not indicted.

The archive, a comprehensive collection of 1,000 racial homicides that took place in the Jim Crow South between 1930 and 1954, will serve as a tool to shed light on the scope of racial murders during this time frame, their mishandling by local police and authorities, and their effect on the law and politics. It can be found at crrjarchive.org.

The project is the result of 15 years of work, with hundreds of students gathering 20,000 pieces of evidence — items like death certificates, press clippings, law enforcement files, reports from civil rights groups, photographs, and personal stories.

Led by Project Archivist Gina Nortonsmith, staff from the Library’s Archives and Special Collections, Digital Production Services, and Digital Scholarship Group then worked tirelessly to take that raw data and make it searchable, digitizing and cataloging it so that researchers can quickly gather information as they study specific cases or the general trend of anti-Black violence in the Jim Crow south.

“This is one of the most important projects that the Northeastern University Library has been involved with, and I’m proud of the many staff members who have helped to build this essential archive that documents a tragic, unsettling period in America’s history,” said Dan Cohen, Dean of the Library.

The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive is part of the larger Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, whose aim is to educate the public about historical anti-Black racial violence and failures of the criminal justice system, as well as to investigate those cases in which proper justice has not been served. It was founded by Northeastern University Law Professor Margaret Burnham, who serves as its director and recently published the book By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners.