Nenomoshia Yates

Nenomoshia “Neno” Yates was a 12‑year‑old girl who lived with her family on Benning Road in Southeast Washington, D.C. She was a sixth‑grader at Kelly Miller Junior High School and — as contemporary reports record — was known to family and friends by the affectionate nickname “Neno.”

On the evening of October 1, 1971, Nenomoshia left home on a short errand to a nearby Safeway to buy household items. Those small, everyday tasks — things many children do for their families — are how she is described in contemporaneous accounts: a child carrying out normal duties for the people who cared for her. She did not return home that night. Within hours her body was found not far from the District line. The violence of her death was recorded by investigators; over the decades her name has remained in public records and reporting as one of several young girls lost in the region during 1971–1972.

Though the public record emphasizes the tragic circumstances that ended her life, the details that are preserved point first to a real child with ordinary ties: a neighborhood on Benning Road, a school classroom at Kelly Miller, family errands and the small chores of daily life. Those quiet, human details are what remain most fitting to hold in memory: Nenomoshia as a daughter and student, a girl known by a tender nickname, whose life mattered to people in her community.

No family‑published obituary located in reliable archives was found that exactly matches both Nenomoshia’s full name and the death date of October 1, 1971. Public reporting and later historical accounts place her among the young Black girls whose murders in that period brought grief to families across Washington and Prince George’s County. In remembering Nenomoshia, it is important to center the child she was — not only the way she is recorded in investigative files — and to acknowledge that the public record offers only a few verified details about her life. Those details still mark a person who was loved and who belonged to a family and neighborhood.

If visitors seek to honor Nenomoshia’s memory, consider offering a moment of reflection for the child she was: a sixth‑grader named Neno from Benning Road, whose life and small daily responsibilities were part of a family and a neighborhood. May remembering those ordinary, human things keep the focus where it belongs — on her life rather than on how it ended.