Those We Lost — September 24

Honoring those we lost on September 24 — remembered for what they gave, and for what they left behind.

Bill Nunn

Full name: William Goldwyn Nunn III

Born October 20, 1952 — died September 24, 2016

Actor.

Nunn’s Radio Raheem in Do the Right Thing — the young man with the LOVE and HATE rings, killed by a police choke hold — gave American cinema one of its most prophetic scenes, decades before the nation chanted "I can’t breathe." The Morehouse man also warmed audiences in Sister Act and the Spider-Man films.

Pharoah Sanders

Birth name: Farrell Sanders

Born October 13, 1940 — died September 24, 2022

Tenor saxophonist and spiritual jazz master.

Sanders stood beside John Coltrane in his final years, then carried spiritual jazz forward with "The Creator Has a Master Plan," moving between overwhelming fire and unbearable tenderness. At eighty, his album Promises introduced him to yet another generation.

Marcellus Williams

Born in 1968 — executed September 24, 2024

Poet, imam, and cause of a worldwide clemency movement.

Missouri executed Williams for a 1998 murder despite DNA evidence from the weapon that did not match him — over the objections of the victim’s family and the prosecutor’s own office, and the petitions of more than a million people. He spent his final years as an imam to fellow prisoners; his case stands as a searing indictment of capital punishment.