Professor Margaret Burnham, founder and director of the law school’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project and faculty co-director of the Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR), continues to receive awards and accolades for her book, By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners (W.W. Norton, 2022), as well as for her social justice leadership. In September, she was honored with the 2023 Mass Humanities Governor’s Award for her “dedication to exploring history, illuminating truth and confronting injustice in order to protect civil and human rights locally, nationally and internationally.”

Also this fall, Burnham received Nonfiction Honors in the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s Mass Book Awards and won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in the historical nonfiction category. Burnham was inducted into Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s inaugural Hall of Fame at a gala in September. Recipients were selected based on their career accomplishments, contributions to the development of the law in Massachusetts, contributions to the bar and efforts to improve the quality of justice in Massachusetts. Burnham was in good company; Mary Bonauto ’87 and Joyce Kauffman ’92 were also selected for the Hall of Fame.