Shirts Of Dead Preserve Memories

NEW ORLEANS - On any given day at the B.W. Cooper public-housing complex, someone is probably wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of Randall Watts.

Watts is not a rap musician or sports hero or movie star. He is a New Orleans murder victim, another in the long line of more or less anonymous young men whose lives ended suddenly on the streets.

Watts was a street-savvy 28-year-old with a rap sheet, born and raised in the 'hood, feared by some, loved and respected by others. After he was gunned down in a courtyard near his home, his popularity generated a virtual display case of memorial T-shirts, sweat shirts and bandannas.

Jacqueline Green was wearing her Watts T-shirt one day recently, the one that says: "My Ghetto Hero/We Watched Him Live Fast."

"I have a sweatshirt and a T-shirt," Green said. "It represents how strong we feel for each other back here. It's like being part of a big family."

Using a T-shirt to memorialize the dead, especially young black men who die violently, has become a homegrown New Orleans tradition and a cottage industry as well.

Dillard University sociologist Cal Wiltz said the practice is worthy of academic study because of what it reveals about the city's unique culture.

"We've always celebrated death differently than other places," Wiltz said.

Ricky Lewis creates the vast majority of the city's memorial T-shirts at his tiny kiosk in a strip mall.

When Lewis started his customized shirt business in 1991, he was thinking birthdays, anniversaries and graduations. Using a computer, scanner, specialized printer and heat press, Lewis devised a way to print any photo onto a shirt, then add words and decorations at the customer's request.

But "Happy Birthday" and "Congratulations" quickly gave way to "Rest In Peace" and "Gone But Not Forgotten."

"It all started when some guy came to me to do a memorial," said Lewis, 42. "He ordered 30 shirts. It just took off from there."

Today, Lewis estimates that 95 percent of his business is memorial T-shirts, or "dead man's shirts," as they are known in some circles. The custom draws liberally from hip-hop culture and often reflects the close-knit fabric of the city's neighborhoods. Frequently the shirts include references to "gangsta life" - many of them pulled from popular rap songs - and simply nicknames of victims.

Smokey's shirt included the line "Thug Life Forever." Cheddi's shirt said "Hill Top Soulja . . . I Miss My Homie." Bookie's shirt said "See What Playa Haters Do." Lloyd's shirt used rap slang for gangster: "Bury Me A `G.' "

All four men were murdered before their 21st birthdays.

Some of the designs are requested on almost every shirt. Below the deceased person's photograph, for example, survivors request the phrase "Sunrise - Sunset," along with birth and death dates. Marijuana leaves are popular. So are pairs of dice with numbers depicting the ward the victim hailed from.

Some of the photos are themselves startling artifacts, images that cut deep into the grain of street culture. D-Boy's photo shows him in a coffin, his mouth sewn open to show off his numerous gold-capped teeth. Lawrence Thomas' photo shows him holding an AK-47 assault rifle, complete with banana clip.

Thomas' mother, Evelina, said she was shocked when a horde of youngsters showed up wearing the shirt at her son's funeral. She said the shirt was designed by Thomas' brother and some friends.

"I had picked out another picture. I wanted to show his good side. I didn't even know he had a gun like that. But I guess he had a life on the street that he didn't show me at home," she said.

Plastered along two walls in Lewis' shop, Video Images, are buttons depicting the images he has transferred onto T-shirts. There is more than a touch of tragedy to the display: Rows and rows of young black men stare, mug or smile into the camera, nearly all of them young murder victims.

"Everywhere I go I see T-shirts that I've made," Lewis said. "I try not to let it get to me. I don't even know these guys."

But Lewis, a sharp dresser who never misses his thrice-weekly Bible study class, has not been able to stay completely detached from the city's violence.

Several times, customers who ordered T-shirts for a slain friend later became victims memorialized on their own shirts.

There are signs that the memorial T-shirt is catching on elsewhere. It is increasingly common among California gang members, although the trend there seems to tilt toward air-brushed shirts. But in several Southern cities, including Atlanta and Montgomery, Ala., the photographic tribute is hot.

Wiltz, the Dillard sociologist, said the phenomenon speaks volumes about culture and tradition.

"It's all about sharing a sense of identity," Wiltz said. "Other people might be united by their job or their bowling team. But a lot of these young kids have very little to unite them other than their neighborhood and their friends. By wearing the T-shirt, people are able to make a statement about their identity and their unity."