A Holy Response to Urban Violence

Bio: Bill Terry is rector of St. Anna’s Episcopal Church in New Orleans. In 2007, he started to list the names of individuals recently murdered in the city on a board outside of the church’s building. The church sees the “murder board” as a public memorial, a way to humanize victims of urban violence. stannanola.org

1. What inspired the murder board? When we talk about murder in the United States, we tend to talk in terms of numbers. Cities talk in terms of a murder rate, which is dehumanizing. We thought we would start listing the names of murder victims rather than numbers. We used to have the names printed, but the printers couldn’t keep up, so we started writing them down. We list the names, the age, and whether the individual was shot or stabbed. That has a visceral impact and, in and of itself, tells a story. There’s nothing glorious about it. It’s a holy site, and people have a holy response to it. Through the board, we began to humanize the deep loss in our city.

2. What impact does the board have? It’s hard to be a Republican or a Democrat when looking at the murder board. It’s hard to be accusing and making aspersions against a race, community, or economic class. More than 2,000 names are on that board alone. They are [people murdered] from 2007 to 2012 in a city of less than 500,000. And during that period, our population got as low as 350,000. I had a police officer who came here and noticed the permanent memorial. He asked if it was all the murders in the state, and I said no, it’s [murders] in New Orleans. He was shocked. Then he went over and started reading the board from left to right. He spent about 20 minutes just slowly walking along the board. He walked back to me, very quiet, tears in his eyes. He said, “I counted three guys I went to high school with. I had no idea, Father.” Then he quietly walked away. That’s the transformative power of our public exhibition.

3. What is the future of the exhibition? An artist came up with the idea of installing stars on the ceiling of our church. One star for every murder victim. We’ve already got 3,000 stars. They haven’t been made yet, but that would be the number. [We would] geographically locate them throughout the ceiling and tie that into a small computer where people could locate the star representing their loved one. The installation would be profoundly moving and create a pilgrimage site for people to come and wonder about urban violence, not just here, but throughout the United States. It would be a graphic representation and a holy representation.

4. You’ve been writing names on the board for nearly 11 years now. What keeps you hopeful? Well, at the end of the day, when political horizons shift and change, I think Americans are getting informed enough to, at some point, pass reasoned gun laws that might, if not eliminate, certainly reduce the possibility of gratuitous violence. That’s my hope. And I’ve got to keep hoping.

5. You said that you don’t want to be remembered as the murder board priest. How do you want to be remembered? As a guy that reached out into a diverse community, who showed the love of Christ to all races, all genders, all creeds, and all sexual orientations—the real gospel of Jesus.