The city of Boston’s Task Force on Reparations has selected a Northeastern University School of Law team, led by renowned civil rights leader Professor Margaret Burnham, to research the multigenerational impact of slavery on Black Bostonians. The team’s research and report will play a central role in guiding the city’s reparations efforts.

“Our goal will be to highlight how power was exercised in the city of Boston to allocate resources, benefiting certain groups and burdening others,” said Burnham, who heads Northeastern Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project and is faculty codirector of the school’s Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR). The team, led by Burnham and Deborah Jackson, managing director of CLEAR, will conduct archival research into the legacies of slavery as they’ve affected economic development, public education, public services and housing in Boston from 1940 to the present.

The team will also draw on the expertise of Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs Ted Landsmark, director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy; Giordana Mecagni, head of special collections and archivist for Northeastern; Professor Emeritus Peter Enrich; and community leader Donna Bivens.

The Task Force on Reparations, chaired by Joseph Feaster Jr. ’75, has until the end of 2024 to make its recommendations for reparative justice solutions in Boston. “The recommendations have to be based on a comprehensive and accurate illumination and understanding of history,” said Burnham. “The goal is to research the ways in which city policy disadvantaged its minority communities and its communities of color and reinforced the segregatory and discriminatory behavior of private actors.”