Nolan Wells is More Than Another Name
His death is raising familiar fears for Black families
Nolan Wells should still be alive.
Privilege is not just about what doesn’t happen to you; it is also about what you don’t have to carry or think about. It is the conversations that you don’t have to have with your children. It is the grief and anger you do not have to feel, names you do not have to call, fear that justice won’t be served, circumstances you don’t have to survive.
When 18-year-old Nolan Wells went to Horn Island on Independence Day, no one knew it would be his last time being seen alive. His mother called him “NoNo” and described him as kind, sweet. In most pictures that I see of him he smiles, his teeth as radiant as his eyes and demeanor. He was young, Black, and now dead — left behind on a remote island by what some people have called his “friends.”
He was a freshman wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College, around two or three hours away from the island. A highlight reel the family’s attorney posted shows Nolan as he gestures in a first-down motion; he smiles; he jumps up with his teammates, and then, he signs a letter of intent to attend college and play for the team. By all accounts, as we’ve learned of him through family and friends, Nolan was that guy: charming, ambitious, kind, determined.
He would have turned 19 next month.
Here is what we know: According to reports, Nolan and a group of teenagers — all white — had gone out to the Island. Nolan was last seen at 3 p.m. The group he’d come with had left the island, and none of them reported him missing. His mother, God bless her soul, had to report him missing. Those boys came with him, left, and said not a word.
Here is what we know: From the time Nolan was last seen to the time his body was discovered was 48 hours. In those 48 hours, none of those “friends” thought to stay on the island. In those 48 hours, his mother begged and pleaded on social media. In those 48 hours, his name came across our feeds, and our stomachs churned with rage. The news came, our hearts sank.
Here is what we don’t know: Why would “friends” leave their friend behind on a deserted island in the dead heat of a Mississippi summer? Why would none of them report him missing? How could they sleep at night? How could they or their parents wake up the next morning and go on about their day? How could they be so cold and unmoved and unconcerned?
This is the sad and apathetic reality of this kind of whiteness: there is no sense of urgency or care for another human being; no care for his survival; no care for his family’s tears.
If Nolan had died while with his family, that would have been a tragedy enough to make the toughest of us weep. But he didn’t. He died alone. His final minutes were not spent with his mother or father or actual friends, but with a group of white boys who left him on a deserted land with gator-infested waters. That is what crushes so much.
And that it happened on the 250th anniversary of this country’s independence — its declaration of freedom from one kind of oppression — is the brutal reminder that we have not reached complete freedom just yet.
I’ve been in Mississippi for the last few weeks, just five miles from where Nolan was found. A few days ago, I was writing in Ocean Springs, the town where he grew up, staring out onto the roads as the cars passed by. The air was thick and unforgiving, almost like the coastal waters here in the Gulf after a storm.
It is said that the waters here in this stretch of Route 90 are murky because the Mississippi Sound is shallow and sediment gets trapped. During certain weather conditions, the waters become contaminated and filled with bacteria. The night before Nolan disappeared, I watched a raging storm pass over Horn Island. It is not lost on me that here — part of the same place the president wants to rename the Gulf of America — is its own kind of brutal and ironic metaphor.
I can’t help but think of those early moments when we heard of the death of Ahmaud Arbery — and so many Black people who died under “mysterious circumstances.” How in the beginning, we had heard so little of what actually happened, only to find out that what we were being told wasn’t how the tragedy of that day unfolded. I can’t help but feel those same feelings right now.
Both Ahmaud and Nolan were young and Black and loved the game of football; both were said to have an infectious smile and personality; both were doing what they felt to be pleasurable and their right to do; both of their last moments were spent surrounded by a sea of white and uncaring faces; both, we would say, are dead before their time. And though we know Ahmaud was murdered and so much is still left to be answered in the death of Nolan, the same uneasy feelings arise when that old and familiar shock to the collective Black nervous system happens again and again.
To think, had Ahmaud’s killers not recorded the murder, none of us would have ever known. The whole system was set against him, corrupt at every step. And we can’t help but be bothered by what is left unsaid and what is left unknown and what remains to be discovered.
This is what we as Black people mean when we say there is a kind of collective grief: Nolan wasn’t our child, but we are heartbroken. But whatever we are feeling, those who knew and loved him best are experiencing it in far deeper and painful ways. And yet the collective, vicarious grief is real because Nolan could be any of us: he could be our friend, our teammate, our cousin, our son.
Then there is a particular kind of heartbreak in being a Black parent in this country. You know what this country has done to us and our loved ones, and what it made us endure. You know how many conversations you’ve had with your child, both to arm and affirm them even as the country tries to convince them of its own progress — that everyone in America is safe, and the ghosts of history have been buried.
You know how terrifying it is to be only one degree away from being a victim of American apathy, that chilling disregard for anything Black and alive and moving freely. You know that at some point you must tell your child the truth of this place: for good or for ill. You know you want to protect what you see in them while also preparing them for what others will refuse to see.
And every time, you do it — you do it because so much depends on your ability to keep moving through the heartbreak and not to be destroyed by it. You do it because you know that when you look into those precious eyes of your child — as I have my own when they asked me who Nolan Wells was — you know you must give them hope and protect that part of them that remains open to the world.
If anybody knows, Black people know.
We know that Nolan deserved better than what he got. We know that though his so-called “friends” couldn’t see him, we do and we would have never left him behind. We know that this is an all too familiar American story. We know that right now it’s a waiting game and we pray that justice will be done.
But that waiting game is hard. Having to contend against whiteness is hard. Having to be strong is hard. It is terrifying, and we can only hold his family in the dearest of prayers. We can only say his name and say it again and again, as loud and as tender as we can muster: “You deserve to be here, you deserve to grow up, you deserve to live.”
And I can already hear people saying, “Let’s wait for the facts.” I understand that sentiment, but we are Black and many of us are Southern and have seen the face of white supremacy many times. We know what we see and feel; we know deep in the crevices of our minds and in the churning of our guts and in the pleading with our children and in the grieving and in the hoping.
This morning, I have done the same thing I do most times these tragedies happen: I save the images of the dead to honor their memory and living. In every image Nolan smiles. I see him happy at Signing Day, his playing days in high school completed, his playing days in college on the horizon. I see his high school graduation photo, his father and mother hugging him at his waist, the tassel declaring to everyone, “I made it!” I think of so many Black kids like him who are loved, and cherished, and then gone.
When I look at him, I think of myself and I think of my son and so many Black boys who are lovely in spite of the world’s unloving gaze. I see in his eyes what I see in so many of us: courage, wonder, freedom, desire, pleasure, ambition, commitment, kindness.
I don’t know what these next moments will hold, and I truly do not anticipate what is to come, but we are here and can fight for him, and that counts for something. We must grieve and when the time is right, we must demand more of this country. We must demand its care.
He was more than a dead Black boy: he was Nolan Xavier Wells — loved, beautiful, alive — and he deserves to be here and safe.
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