Meet A Mom Listing The Death Of ‘Somebody’s Baby’ Some 165 Times

EVANSTON, IL — "Each one of these names was somebody's baby," Jennifer Moss wrote on her normally upbeat babynames.com website, a destination primarily for expectant parents to find out what their potential baby names really mean.

The Evanston native put the empathy of a mother behind her powerful statement in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. She indexed the names of some 165 Black Americans, mostly men, whose lives have been cut short by violence over the decades. The names on her website are printed in white-on-black type, one after another on line after line, each some mother's tragedy.

#SayTheirName, the site tweeted.

“You are heard," Moss told Patch of the message she wants those mothers to hear. "You are acknowledged. We are so sorry for your loss.”

The somber list on babynames.com begins with Emmett Till, the Chicago 14-year-old who was brutally beaten in 1955 by the husband and brother of a White woman who said the teen visiting family in Mississippi had flirted with her. They forced him to strip naked and gouged out one of his eyes before shooting him in the head, then tied him to a 75-pound cotton gin and threw him into the Tallahatchie River.

It ends with the names of George Floyd, who died with a White Minneapolis police officer’s knee on his neck, sparking a wave of demonstrations against police brutality, and Rayshard Brooks, an Atlanta man who was shot two times in the back Saturday after he wrested a stun gun from one of the police officers trying to take him into custody.

In between are the names of notable civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. But mostly, the index is a line-by-line accounting of Black Americans never known to America until after they died. Most died in police violence or, in a few cases such as the fatal shooting of Georgia jogger Ahmaud Arbery, at the hands of civilians.

“All these weeping mothers,” Moss said.

“George called out to his mother,” she said of Floyd. “Even as I wrote it and posted it, I was crying.”

Moss said she saw the names listed on the National Public Radio and wanted to “make a statement and to humanize them.”

To truly understand why Moss, 57, added her voice to the call for justice, go back to her first grade self in 1968, another tumultuous time in America’s painful journey to racial equality.

It was the year MLK was assassinated as he stood on a balcony outside his Memphis, Tennessee, hotel room on a warm April evening. Bobby Kennedy, another civil rights champion, was shot and killed in June after winning the California Democratic presidential primary. Violence swirled on the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention in August when the infamous Chicago Seven were arrested.

“The power of privilege and voice to make something happen in the world is really incredible.”

— Jennifer Moss, founder, babynames.com

Moss was 6 and her sister Mallory was 5 when their parents, Don and Peggy Moss, enrolled them in what was known as Martin Luther King Jr. Laboratory School #65. The school in Evanston was considered innovative for the times, and the girls were among about 130 White children whose parents volunteered to have them bused from other parts of Evanston to the all-Black Foster Elementary School. The school still exists today as the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Literary and Fine Arts School.

The sisters were raised by parents who put action behind their commitment to civil rights. Their father marched with demonstrators in Evanston and Chicago, and worked for the Chicago Urban League. When the opportunity arose for them to give the girls a chance to learn alongside kids who didn’t look like them, Peggy Moss took it.

“It was an extraordinary experience,” Moss said. “We sang ‘We Shall Overcome.’ We celebrated Dr. King’s birthday before it was a national holiday.”

Moss attended the laboratory school through fifth grade and calls it one of the most important, formative experiences of her life.

“They taught us about racism,” she said. “We were exposed to it as young children. Talk about waking someone up. I think that was really important.”

The response to her statement on babynames.com, a family-run website she has operated from her California home since 1996, both surprised and gratified Moss.

Unique visitors to her site doubled to 4 million in the week after Moss promoted the website design change in social media posts praised by celebrities such as Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah, host of “The Daily Show.”

“That these eight little words — ‘Each one of these names was somebody’s baby’ — that I wrote on my website resonated all over the world is so incredible to me, so heartfelt.”

The lesson, she said, is that even small companies can contribute to the understanding of complex issues of systemic racism.

“The power of privilege and voice to make something happen in the world is really incredible,” she said.