At Tyre Nichols’ funeral, Black America’s grief on public display

RowVaughn Wells cries as she and her husband Rodney Wells attend the funeral service for her son Tyre Nichols at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, Tenn., on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023. Credit: (Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean)

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — The sound of the djembe drums started as a low tremble and grew more distinct as the musicians drew closer to the hundreds gathered inside the Memphis church.

“We love you, Tyre,” the drummers chanted, referring to Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man whose beating by five police officers led to his death and this funeral on the first day of Black History Month.

By the time the procession reached Nichols’ black casket draped in a large white bouquet, the congregation in the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church was on its feet shouting the chant in unison. Some raised clenched fists. Others let out screams of grief. Many grabbed tissues to dab at tears. All of it streamed live on television.

RowVaughn Wells speaks alongside her husband Rodney Wells and the Rev. Al Sharpton during the funeral service for her son Tyre Nichols. (Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean)

The funeral on Wednesday had all the hallmarks of what’s known as a homegoing service in Black American communities: comforting gospel hymns, remembrances from loved ones and a stirring eulogy from a clergyman.

But in addition to offering an outlet for the private mourning of Nichols’ family and friends, this ritual was also public and political. It was a venue to air the shared grief of Black Americans — and to once again call for leaders to address an epidemic of police violence so that this time might be different.

Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP, Pool

“As we celebrate Tyre’s life and comfort this family, we serve notice to this nation that the rerun of this episode that makes Black lives hashtags has been canceled and will not be renewed for another season,” said the Rev. J. Lawrence Turner, senior pastor of the church.

“We have come and we shall overcome,” he said.

Such funeral services are one part heartfelt tribute and one part civil rights rally — a symbolic tax Black Americans have paid time and again from Emmett Till and George Floyd to those killed in mass shootings by white supremacists in Charleston and Buffalo.

“Grieving has many forms — the form that it’s taken for African Americans, historically and even today, is that the grieving process for us is not silent,” said W. Franklyn Richardson, chairman of The Conference of National Black Churches, a public policy and social justice organization that represents predominantly Black Christian denominations.

“Part of the way you get healed is to do something about what has happened to your loved one unfairly,” he said. “You have the opportunity, while you have the attention, to try to participate in getting justice.”

Not all victims’ families welcome the attention. Some will put limits on the number of journalists and cameras allowed into the funeral, or ask that media be prohibited from the service altogether.

But the public is rarely shut out, and funerals for Black victims of brutality and racist violence typically draw people who did not personally know the victim — from the community where the violence occurred and from across the U.S.

During Wednesday’s service, Nichols’ family shared details that almost anyone would want remembered about their loved one. As a kid, Nichols was easy to care for, as long as he had a big bowl of cereal and the TV fixed on cartoons, his older sister Keyana Dixon shared.

He loved photography. He was an avid skateboarder. He was father to a 4-year-old son.

During a eulogy, the Rev. Al Sharpton sought to assure Nichols’ mother and stepfather that their loss won’t be in vain.

“I believe that babies unborn will know about Tyre Nichols because we won’t let his memory die,” said Sharpton who, in just the last decade, has delivered remarks on such occasion dozens of times.

“We’re going to change this country because we refuse to keep living under the threat of the cops and the robbers.”