‘Witness To History’: A St. Louis Son, Rev. Osagyefo Sekou Sees A Path To Freedom

Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, a child of St. Louis who became a scholar and citizen of the world, is this week’s guest on Urban One’s iOne Digital annual limited series podcast, Witness to History.

This year’s series takes us back to the late summer and fall of 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, where a community’s disciplined, powerful and sustained uprising inspired a world to demand human rights for Black people living in America. And though Rev. Sekou’s St. Louis beginning may have seemed far in his rearview mirror, it was in fact right there, in his direct line of sight.

In conversation with our colleague and co-producer, Tory Russell, he remembers when he first learned his hometown had gone up flames in those hard, fast hours that followed the public execution of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The teenager had been shot to death in broad daylight on Aug. 9, 2014. His killer was a white (now former) Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, who’d seen Michael walking with a friend less than 90 seconds before yelling for him to stop, to put his hands in the air. Which he did. And which scores of witnesses reported immediately.

And they reported how Wilson fired anyway, six bullets into the body of a young Black man, unarmed and meant to start college just two days later. His cold-blooded killing gave rise to the chant which was based on what may have been Michael’s final words:

Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!

Rev. Sekou heard the news while at his temporary residence in Boston, where he was on brief leave from his position at Stanford to finish a book on Dr. King. He’d been stunned to hear the news from friends that his hometown was risen all the up; it was not a place historically known for its demonstrations. Rev. Sekou, frequent collaborator with Working Families Party’s 2024 presidential candidate, Dr. Cornel West, had long been known globally as a scholar, theologian, author, musician, documentary filmmaker, and organizer who would go anyplace he was invited to and asked to serve. The invite was key.

It was different this time. When Ferguson went up, he didn’t wait for the call. He flew directly in.

Tory Russell, our colleague and co-producer on this series–and leader of the uprising–discusses with Sekou the learnings from Ferguson, the opportunities created there still bubbling with the possibility for revolutionary change. Rev. Sekou, the faith leader who was arrested multiple times during the protest, once with 40 other faith leaders for “praying while Black,” had his case held up for 18 months by the city before he was found not guilty.

The two men note the city’s waste, but they also remember Ferguson as a place that redlined Black people out of buying homes, and then, missing the tax revenue that homeowners living in the city would have generated, built the municipal budget out on the backs of the poor.

In 2013, Ferguson was a town of 22,000 people. It was also a town where 30,000 fee-based tickets were issued.

Yet while that was and to a difference is still true, there is no losing sight of hope, the two men remind us. Ferguson inspired people across the States, and people as far away as Hong Kong and Burkina Faso and points in between. It was a marker in time.

If Black Lives Matter was the Word, Rev. shares, then Ferguson was the Word made Flesh.

In that space, in that time, people learned the difference between being allied and being in solidarity. They learned and unpacked here the limitations of neoliberalism, in particular as its made manifest in the “non-profit industrial complex.” Young people who were already armed, learned weapons safety for the first time, and discipline. They learned nonviolent civil disobedience. They learned to be absolutely clear that Black people will be who saves Black people. Our culture matters. Our culture is what has always saved us in the land we weren’t meant to survive.

Rev. Sekou reminds us of the need each of us have to live a life with dignity– though the word is defined differently by different Black people. Where can we find common ground–something akin to what happened in Tory’s own family when, for the first time, his father speaks of his own protest work and the death of his own father, whose name Tory bears.

He’d been shot dead in the back by white police in New Orleans when Tory’s father was 2.

Yet a tradition of resistance and hope survived, and grew. Listen to this incredible discussion between two men dedicated to our freedom.

SEE ALSO:

Cornel West Opens 2024’s ‘Witness To History,’ iOneDigital’s Podcast

Ferguson X: Michael Brown Should Be Here, Be 28 And Be Living His Best Life

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