Randy Moss wore a tie to Saturday’s Pro Football Hall of Fame ceremonies showing the names of black men and women and children who were either killed by police or died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Moss didn’t bring it up during his animated 17-minute speech, but he had an opportunity to describe and explain the tie afterwards, sitting next to a soaked Ray Lewis at the NFL Network broadcast desk:
“What I wanted to be able to express with my tie is to let these families know that they’re not alone. I’m not here, you know, voicing, but by these names on my tie, and a big platform as the Pro Football Hall of Fame—there’s a lot of stuff going on in our country, and I just wanted to let these family members know that they’re not alone.”
Probably Moss didn’t mean it this way, but with the context of Ray Lewis’s sopping wet jacket and crazy-ass protect our children from school shootings by bringing prayer back to schools sermon, the quiet acknowledgement and memorialization of actual victims of police violence seems especially poignant.