Teenager Michael Brown was gunned down by police – a decade on, his town is still healing

Just after noon on a humid summer day in Missouri, six gunshots rang out on Canfield Drive.

The warm asphalt was soon stained with blood from teenager Michael Brown, who had been gunned down by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.

The 18-year-old was left in the street for hours as residents from the town of Ferguson flocked to the scene to see what had happened. Word spread quickly in the tightly-knit St. Louis suburb that ‘Mike Mike’, who graduated high school days earlier, was dead. 

It was 10 years ago that Michael was killed. His death sparked an outpouring of emotion and months of protests from Black Americans, desperate for an answer as to how another unarmed Black man could be killed by police. 

Authorities responded to the demonstrations with militarised police, who shot rubber bullets and tear gassed protestors who had gathered. Witnesses said they targeted both peaceful demonstrators and others who used the chaos to begin looting. 

Wilson, the officer who fired the fatal shots, said he shot Michael in self defence and was never indicted on charges of criminal wrongdoing. Though many question the circumstances surrounding Michael’s death, there’s no denying his death had a powerful impact.

A decade on from that fateful night, Metro spoke to some of the protesters who were on the ground soon after the shooting, about how Ferguson has changed since Michael’s death.

‘From the mouth of babes’

‘I just saw this dude get killed.’ 

These are the words that met Johnetta (Netta) Elzie when she logged onto her Twitter account on August 9 – paired with a photo of Michael lying lifeless in the street. 

‘I was like, “What the f*** is happening?”’ she tells Metro. ‘If you don’t know Missouri, it’s hot as hell. It was summertime and really humid. People were saying Mike’s body was laying in the street – in that heat – for hours. That alarmed me. It made me aware of the cruelty of the moment we were in.’

Netta and her friend drove to Ferguson after work that evening. She recalls that, initially, not much was going on near the crime scene. However, she did overhear small children who lived nearby Canfield Street say to their parents, ‘Mike Mike got killed.’ 

‘Hearing that come out of the kids’ mouth and seeing Mike’s blood still on that street even after people had tried to wash away his blood earlier that day…’ she remembers. ‘Those two moments are what made me keep showing up. From the mouth of babes, right?’

Netta protested in Ferguson for the first few days after Michael’s death, but she says the situation was made more personal after police militarised to address reported looting – on the same night as a candlelight vigil.

‘They had on full armour and M16s in their hands, while we had candles,’ she explains. On day five of the protests, she was tear gassed for the first time. 

‘That’s when I was like, “Oh, y’all f***** up. Now this is personal.” They were messing with my health – I’m asthmatic,’ says Netta. ‘I got tear gassed and shot on the same night – with rubber bullets my tax dollars paid for.’ 

After that night, there was no turning back for her. Netta took part in the Ferguson protests – which would go on to last hundreds of days – and documented each night on her phone, earning her the title online of ‘social media activist’, which led her to her current job of policy work and consultancy.

The scenes that Netta still can’t shake 10 years on are those of children being in the line of rubber bullets amidst the chaos. Having welcomed her own son three years ago, she now has a different perspective on her time in Ferguson.

‘For the first eight years or so of doing this work, I was childless. Now, I have a husband and son – both of whom are Black,’ she reflects.

‘It’s a glaring reality that all of the work that I have been doing – while it does impact me – has impacted people I hadn’t even thought of yet.’

‘We were right’

Like many other Americans, DeRay McKesson first watched the events in Ferguson unfold on his phone, nearly 600 miles away in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

When he witnessed protestors clash with the police, the former teacher packed his car and posted online: ‘En route to Ferguson.’ 

He tells Metro: ‘I remember thinking, “We gotta figure out what’s happening. I want do something and I don’t know what to do.” I had never been an activist in that way before. 

‘But if I couldn’t give up my weekend for this, then did I really care?’

The first night DeRay was tear gassed, he says it changed his life. The police had said there was a curfew at midnight – but he claims the tear gassing began around 8pm.

‘We were right and the police thought they were going to scare us, going to bully us into being quiet. That didn’t happen,’ he explains.

‘I think the police thought was that if they came out in force that people would be afraid and go home.

‘They didn’t realise that coming out in force just made more people come out because people knew the killing of Mike Brown was unjust and wrong.’

After giving up his job and protesting in Ferguson for hundreds of days, DeRay became one of the most familiar faces on television screens. He also co-founded the project Campaign Zero, which aims to be a policy answer for the change protesters wanted to see.

‘We can influence police violence in this lifetime,’ he explains. ‘Before August 2014, I would have said the police are breaking the rules. When we started this work, I realised – “Oh. The police are playing by a different set of rules.”

‘We can expose this and we can make change.’

‘It feels like it happened yesterday’

DeRay tells Metro that Michael’s mother, Leslie McSpadden, doesn’t commemorate August 9, when her son was gunned down in the heat of summer.

She does, however, celebrate his birthday each year in May. But that doesn’t make it easier.

‘Everyday, she says it feels like it happened yesterday,’ says DeRay.

Reminders of the events of August 2014 are all around in Ferguson – the site where the QuikTrip burned down is now the Ferguson Community Empowerment Centre, run by the Salvation Army and the Urban League of St. Louis.

Michael McMillan, 53, the president and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, tells Metro that Michael’s death was a breaking point for the community.

‘There was a lot of rage, anger, resentment and disgust from people in the community that felt as though there was a very bad history from the police and the community,’ he explains.

‘At the time of Michael Brown’s death, there had never been a Black manager of the city government. There was only one city council man who was Black.’

Since then, the city has elected their first Black female mayor, more African Americans to the city council and a Black police chief.

McMillan, a native St. Louisan, believes Michael’s death changed the city forever.

‘I think it was the worst moment in my lifetime, where we were shown all of the inadequacies and the problems of our public policies and our lack of investment in areas that needed it,’ he says.

‘It inspired us to want to do more and be better versions of ourselves and not just rest on the morals of our past for those of us who have been involved in community, civic, charitable and government service.’

Ferguson Police came under intense scrutiny in the years after Michael’s death, but a spokesperson tells Metro the biggest changes in their department since 2014 are in the forms of training, community engagement and diversity. 

‘We are still the police and will still enforce the law but we do so in a manner that has a greater focus on protecting and preserving people’s constitutional rights,’ they explain. ‘We are focused on becoming the best-trained force in the region and a model for community policing.

‘Ferguson is a resilient city. The challenges that were brought to light after the death of Michael Brown were not new challenges and there were ongoing attempts to address them.

‘But after his death people came to grips with the enormity of the problem. Our community decided to face the challenges head on and rise. We have much more work to do but we are more resolute.’

Ten years have passed, but the work started by those who were on the ground in the days following Michael’s death continues as injustices are still happening.

Most recently, unarmed 36-year-old Sonya Massey was shot and killed by police after she called to report a ‘prowler’ near her home.

Referencing the seismic changes in St Louis and the US after Michael’s death, Netta observes: ‘I think our work continues as far as policing goes – no matter who is in office.

‘It’s more about the community being focused on each other versus what could even go on in the White House.’

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