His Name Was Tyré Nichols

In the 28 months since Tyré Nichols was killed by five Memphis police officers, his name has been written countless times. It has appeared in national news reports, commemorative murals, protest signs held up outside the White House and civil and criminal lawsuits against the officers who killed him.

But the vast majority of these mentions, including in MLK50: Justice Through Journalism’s own reporting, have gotten a detail wrong in Tyré’s name. Tyré is spelled with an accent over the E—a fact his mother, RowVaughn Wells, confirmed to two MLK50 journalists on May 8. 

This spelling difference is small. But it’s important for MLK50 as a community-driven media organization to get the details right—especially people’s names. That’s why, over the coming weeks, MLK50 will be retroactively correcting the spelling of Tyré’s name in our past reporting.

Getting it right

Here’s how we determined the correct spelling of Tyré’s name.

Two MLK50 reporters attended a rally outside the National Civil Rights Museum on May 8 following the previous day’s total state-level acquittal of three of the police officers involved in Nichols’ death. 

Nearly a dozen of his family members who attended wore matching tee shirts with an outline of a man raising his fist to the sky. In the bottom corner of the shirts, MLK50 reporter Natalie Wallington noticed small letters in a handwritten font that read “Tyré Nichols,” including the accent mark.

Following the rally, some attendees began a peaceful march to honor Nichols’ legacy and raise awareness of the recent verdict. As around 100 community members took to South Main Street, the reporters—Wallington and Katherine Burgess—weaved through the crowd to fact-check the shirts’ spelling with those closest to Nichols. 

Tyré’s sister, Keyana Dixon, told Burgess that his name was spelled with an accent mark. But Kareem Ali, one of the family’s lawyers, told Wallington it was not. To be sure, the reporters decided to ask his mother. 

As the protest march looped back to the museum, activist Amber Sherman, MLK50’s creator in residence, relayed Wallington’s question to Wells as she prepared to leave the gathering: Does Tyré’s name have an accent? 

“Yes it does, over the E,” Wells said from her car. “Thank you so much.”

Family context

The widespread misspelling of Tyré’s name shouldn’t necessarily be taken as evidence of malice or carelessness. 

Sources close to him, including the website of the Tyre Nichols Foundation created by his sister, spell his name without an accent. At Thursday’s vigil, members of his own family held up signs and banners without the accent included. Even his own photography website, which he created before his death, omits this mark.

Nevertheless, Wells confirmed that including the accent is the most correct way to spell her son’s name. She added that some sources outside the family never confirmed the spelling with her.

“I didn’t correct some, and some that I couldn’t correct didn’t care to check how it was spelled,” she wrote in response to MLK50’s follow-up questions. 

Wells shared that Tyré was named by his godmother, Latanya Yizar, who has since passed away. She confirmed that she would like to see news outlets add the accent mark to his name, as MLK50 plans to do.