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Research Methodology

Ronald Browne, STN Lead Researcher

Purpose and Value – People of African descent have suffered from grievous oppression beginning from slavery and in varying ways through Jim Crow, the modern Civil Rights movement to the present day. Brutal treatment of blacks at the hands of police, while just one element of that oppression, has been grossly underreported. A consistent goal of African-Americans is the attainment of equal justice under the law, an essential element of social justice. The purpose of Say Their Names is to focus attention on the brutal nature of the policing of blacks in the past with the hope that the information will help reduce its occurrence in the future.

Scope of the Project – Say Their Names is an extension of the Blood Lines Project and focuses on the killing of blacks by police and aims to document occurrences that likely would not have resulted in the death of white Americans given the same set of circumstances. The span of years will cover August 1919 to the present and will be continuously updated. We also will include brief biographical information for each victim, so they don’t appear as dry statistics.

In developing a comprehensive list of those killed by police brutality, first, we have identified more than 2,100 cases across the United States in just the last five years. Our goal is to identify as many such cases as we can dating from 1919 through the present, connecting the Red Summer of 1919 to the present time. We will be reporting those who have been killed by police from the most recent killings and adding the older cases as our research progresses. First priority will be given to cases that have taken place in Illinois. We use as many sources as we can in deciding which cases to cite, including internet news sources, websites of educational institutions, and public library microfiche records.

Specifically, Google.com and Wikipedia.com will be used to identify cases and serve to provide links to other sources of information. A large portion of our database up to this point was obtained through washingtonpost.com; chicagotribune.com; suntimes.com; and other news media websites depending on location. Each reported case is examined against certain criteria as our focus for this project is on those who have been clear innocent victims of police brutality, such as those with no drawn active weapons or not in active pursuit of unlawful actions or other complexities. Because we vet each case as thoroughly as we can, the most recent incidents may take some time to appear on our public website list. We understand that not all cases have been reported in the media and in that path of collecting the most comprehensive list, we invite everyone to collaborate with us.

If you know of a person that should be considered for inclusion, please email us at STN [at] nonopera [dot] org and include the person’s name and as much information as you can provide, such as age, gender, photo, and bio, the incident date and location (city and state), and a brief description of what happened.

Research Team

SAY THEIR NAMES was formally launched in January 2021, and is staffed by Lead Researcher-Supervisor, Ronald Browne; Project Manager, Dr. Saba Ayman-Nolley; Northeastern Illinois University academic supervisor for map development, Ting Liu; and community researcher Omid Nolley; with NON:op’s artistic director, Christophe Preissing, overseeing development of the map and database. Currently we are working with interns from the Metropolitan Chicago Data-science Corp (MCDC): Kota Suzuki, Miranda Stumpff, and Zindeh Scere, in addition to map developer Rob Strzok.

Metropolitan Chicago Data-science Corp (MCDC)

The MCDC represents a collaboration of community organizations and data science students and experts from multiple Chicago-area universities and colleges with an emphasis on equity. The MCDC is an NSF Data Science Corps in the metropolitan Chicago area that focuses on the intersection of data science with three domain-science areas: health sciences, social sciences, and environmental sciences.

To find out more about the current and past research team members, visit the Staff, Interns, and Volunteers page. If you are interested in participating in the research, the video readings, or contributing to SAY THEIR NAMES or the installation, or have questions, please contact STN [at] nonopera [dot] org.