Interlude

A DAY IN AUGUST

I wake up thinking about him just lyin’ there. He was like the dog that’s been hit that you gotta walk by to get to where you’re going. It was over a hundred fucking degrees out there and you knew his body was decomposing fast right before your eyes but they just left him there. They didn’t even cover him up for like over an hour.

—William, resident of Canfield Green Apartments

Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown Jr. walked with his friend, Dorian Johnson, down Canfield Drive on a hot and humid Saturday in August. He had spent most of his summer in school and had graduated days before from Normandy High School. It was just before noon and many residents of the surrounding Canfield Green Apartments were at home. Those without the comfort of air conditioning had their windows open, and some were on shaded balconies or front stoops as the temperature neared one hundred degrees. There was a bouncy castle set up nearby, and a few children played in and around it, their voices echoing off the three-story brick buildings on either side of Canfield Drive. At approximately noon, officer Darren Wilson drove his marked Ferguson police SUV down Canfield Drive and encountered the two walking in an otherwise empty street.

Darren Wilson

I see them walking down the middle of the street. And first thing that struck me was they’re walking in the middle of the street. . . . And the next thing I noticed was the size of the individuals because either the first one was really small or the second one was really big.1

Wilson rolled down his window as he drove by the two and told them to get out of the street or be ticketed for a pedestrian infraction that was frequently cited by the Ferguson police department, described as “manner of walking.”2 The two were visibly irritated and responded that they had almost reached their destination and would soon be getting to the other side of the street. By all accounts, Wilson began to drive away but then stopped abruptly after twenty to thirty feet and backed up his vehicle to where Brown and Johnson were walking. Wilson testified later that he called for backup prior to reversing because he had “a sense about the situation.” Brown approached the SUV as Wilson stopped next to them and is said to have closed Wilson’s door or was in the way as the officer tried to open it. It is unclear from accounts which individual initiated physical contact. Wilson claims to have grabbed Brown’s arm as he reached through the window and Johnson stated that Wilson reached out of his window and grabbed Brown.

Darren Wilson

And when I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan. . . . Hulk Hogan, that’s just how big he felt and how small I felt just from grasping his arm.3

Wilson fired his gun while Brown was near the vehicle, although witnesses’ and Wilson’s accounts differ regarding how that happened. Following the shot, Brown ran several steps away and then turned to face Wilson with his hands up.

Darren Wilson

When it went off, it shot through my door panel and my window was down and glass flew out of my door panel. I think that kind of startled him and me at the same time. . . .4 He looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon. . . . He comes back towards me again with his hands up. I tried to pull the trigger again, nothing happened. . . . When I pulled the trigger again, it goes off. . . .5 It went off twice in the car. Pull, click, click, went off, click, went off. . . . When I looked up after that, I see him start to run and I see a cloud of dust behind him. I then get out of my car.6

What happened in the next few seconds remains disputed by Wilson, Johnson, and other witnesses but ended with Brown, who was unarmed, dead and face down on the centerline of Canfield Drive with at least six bullet wounds, including two to the head. Witnesses, including Wilson, stated that less than a minute elapsed between the initial encounter and Brown’s death. According to autopsies performed by both the state and the family, the first four shots that hit Brown were not thought to be life-threatening. The last bullets entered the top of his skull, indicating that he was leaning or falling forward at the time he was fatally shot. Several witnesses stated Brown was falling to his knees because he had already been shot multiple times when the last shots entered the top of his head from ten to fifteen feet away. Wilson claimed that Brown was empowered by being shot four times and had his head down because he was about to “run right through [him].”

Darren Wilson

I remember looking at my sights and firing, all I see is his head and that’s what I shot. I don’t know how many, I know at least once because I saw the last one go into him. And then when it went into him, the demeanor on his face went blank, the aggression was gone, I mean, I knew he stopped, the threat was stopped. . . . After that is when I got back on the radio and I said, “send me a supervisor and every car you have.”7

According to Wilson, backup arrived soon after Brown fell to the ground, but he never called for medical assistance. The sergeant told Wilson to go sit in his car, which Wilson refused to do because he feared the crowd that was forming, so he gave Wilson the keys to a patrol car, and Wilson drove to the station alone.

Darren Wilson

I remember him saying, Darren, sit in the car. I said, “Sarge, I can’t be singled out. It is already getting hostile, I can’t be singled out in the car. . . .8 I hear yelling, I hear screaming, as I’m walking back to my car. . . . It’s just not a very well-liked community. . . .9 That’s not an area where you can’t take anything lightly.10

People quickly came out into the street and the green spaces close to where Brown’s body had fallen. As people tried to make sense of what had happened, police officers arriving at the scene were cordoning off the area. Several witnesses of the shooting told the congregating residents that Brown had had his hands above his head at the time he was shot.11 Various accounts of what had happened circulated quickly through the crowd as well as on social media, and #Ferguson and #MikeBrown began trending on Twitter. For over an hour, Brown remained uncovered with an increasing trail of blood moving down the street as his body bled out (figure a.1).

The image was captured and uploaded to social media by countless cellphones. As time went on, more people began arriving from across the St. Louis region, as did law enforcement officials. The Ferguson and St. Louis County police departments struggled to secure the area, and many people later reported that it was unclear who was in charge. Bystanders reported that animosity between the police and the crowd was high and escalated as officials left the body exposed and threatened to arrest anyone asking for information.

FIGURE A.1 An image of Michael Brown’s body on Canfield Drive taken by a bystander on August 9, 2014 and posted on Twitter the same day. The photo was downloaded and tweeted multiple times and retweeted thousands of times in the twenty-four hours following Brown’s death.

Photographer and origin of the first tweet unknown.

Marlene

There was a lot of yelling going on between both sides. People wanted to know why this boy was lying in the street and the police acted like we had no right to be in our own front yard. Still, they wanted us to see it. There’s hundreds of kids live in that area. Do you know how traumatic that was? He was out there the whole afternoon. This was a lynching, for real.

The arrival of Brown’s father and later his mother added to the level of emotion and frustration in the crowd, and many people were shocked by what they described as a lack of empathy toward Brown’s mother by police officers at the scene as she begged to be near her son. Some residents stated, “They treated her like a criminal.”12 People were increasingly agitated by the length of time Brown’s body remained on the hot pavement, where, as one older man stated, “you could’ve fried an egg if you’d wanted.”13 It turned out to be four and half hours that Brown’s body stayed on the pavement.

Cheyenne

We heard it on the radio that somebody was killed just down the street. So I guess that mother’s instinct in me, I went down there and I was not prepared for what I saw. And, you know, I was not prepared for people’s reactions either. Children crying, people just asking, “Why did this boy have to die?” And all that. Seeing the body lay there for all those hours. So that was a big deal, right then. And it just sparked something in me that I knew I had to come back. I didn’t know what I was coming back for but I knew had to keep coming. I kept coming back each night. After a few days, we never went home.

Reverend Sekou

It was right before school started and there was a bouncy castle across the street from where he was lying. So there were five-year-olds saying, “Mike’s laying in the street!” They brought out the police dogs before they brought out an ambulance. They tried to put his body in the trunk of a car. The community was like, “You put that body in the trunk of a car and ain’t nobody leaving here alive.” So they put his body in an SUV. That was undignified.14

Brown’s family was not allowed to accompany his body when it was moved at around four thirty that afternoon. Left behind, his mother, Lezley McSpadden, dropped rose petals over the place where her son had died (soon driven over by patrol cars) after police tape was removed (figure a.2).

The crowd soon claimed the street again and constructed an improvised memorial of flowers and stuffed animals over Brown’s blood, as an outpouring of grief and as a refusal to allow authorities to erase what had happened in that space. According to witnesses, police officers allowed their dogs to urinate on the stuffed animals and attempted to dismantle the memorial that evening.15 The memorial—as a site of memory, denigration, and resistance—would become a contentious symbol between residents and the city of Ferguson, as officials repeatedly ordered the police to take down the memorial, only to have residents rebuild it every time. Residents later spoke of the constant contestation of the memorial’s right “to be in the street,” and the disregard for what it represented, as a haunting reminder of how and why Michael Brown had died and the rights of residents to occupy the street in their everyday lives.

FIGURE A.2 “Lezley McSpadden, center, drops rose petals on the blood stains from her 18-year-old son Michael Brown who was shot and killed by police in the middle of the street in Ferguson, Mo., near St. Louis on Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014.”

Associated Press/St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Photo by Huy Mach.

The police left Canfield Drive around ten on the night of August 9, and the crowd eventually dispersed. The next evening, a group estimated at around one hundred people attended a hastily organized candlelight vigil, including many who had witnessed Brown in the street the day before.

As night fell, a smaller group moved from the site of the shooting to nearby West Florissant Road, a commercial thoroughfare a few blocks away. Protesters blocked traffic, chanting, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” and isolated acts of looting by a few people took place, although the event was reported as “rioting in St. Louis suburbs.”16 The Ferguson and St. Louis County police departments responded by issuing a curfew and donning riot gear. Numerous tanks appeared in the street, and the area was described as a war zone. Many people, including reporters, were arrested on the charge of unlawful assembly if they stopped moving. Continued protests, arrests, and militarized police responses, which included repeated use of tear gas and the firing of rubber bullets into the crowd, escalated over the following days (figure a.3). Meanwhile, the mayor of Ferguson insisted there were no racial tensions in Ferguson.

FIGURE A.3 “Police in riot gear watch protesters in Ferguson, Mo. on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014.”

Associated Press. Photo by Jeff Roberson.

Many people who witnessed Brown in the street recalled specific ways in which the image of his body conveyed their own vulnerability—as people out of place. Almost all of them expressed feelings of being spoken to directly through the image of Brown’s body and flesh, saying, “This could be you,” for example. Most viewed his death as a lynching. “That will be you if you get out of line,” a young Black man living in Canfield Green Apartments remembered feeling. Residents also spoke of a disturbing irony they had long felt but saw play out before them on that day: their experience of being targeted, harassed, and regarded as less than human by those who simultaneously practice a most extreme inhumanity. “I just finally woke up when I saw that,” said one young woman said later as she stood in front of the Ferguson Police Department. She went on, “When people talk about police brutality, you think about the young Black men gettin’ killed like Mike Brown. But I realized this is what I live every day.”17