The Don't Forget My Name Project

These shirts are meant to be a teaching tool and conversation starter, NOT a monetization of these tragic deaths, which is why they are sold at a price point that only covers the expense of making them.

The Don’t Forget My Name Project was conceived following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in an effort to foster meaningful dialogue with people who, either by choice or by honest ignorance, have been unable to face what is at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement: black people are being killed by the police at an alarmingly disproportionate rate than white people. When a black person is pulled over for a simple traffic infraction (Sandra Bland, Philando Castile and, most recently, Daunte Wright), they run the very real risk of ending up in a morgue, whereas a white person’s risks are mostly limited to a warning, a ticket, or a court date.

This project began as a t-shirt I designed for myself. I found name after name until I literally ran out of space for the design to still be legible. These are approximately 350 of the hundreds of black people documented as having been killed by the police from 1999 to 2016. There have been many more since then — Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Elijah McClain, and so many others. Most of them were killed from 2014 to 2016. There is one name (Eleanor Bumpurs) from 1984 that was included out of respect for the work the #SayHerName group does. Some were guilty of nothing more than sleeping in their own bed (Aiyana Stanley-Jones); some were guilty of simply driving while black; some were guilty of actual crimes, but crimes that should have resulted in a trial not a funeral. The names in bold represent people who were either unarmed or not brandishing a weapon at the time they were killed or stories you just really need to know.

Learn these names, learn these stories. It is my hope that those who think ‘all lives matter’ is an appropriate response to 'black lives matter' will begin to understand why it is not.

Don’t Forget My Name is also a Crys Matthews song about Trayvon Martin. While Trayvon was not killed by a police officer, his death is one of so many that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement