Today is Michael Brown’s 29th birthday, and as his family continues to pursue justice, it’s on all of us to make sure that his story is never forgotten.
On Saturday, August 9, 2014, while walking with his friend Dorian Johnson in Ferguson, Mo.—after police say he was caught on camera stealing a box of cigars and pushing the clerk of a convenience store into a display case—Michael and Dorian were stopped by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
To this day, there remains a dispute over what exactly happened between this point of the incident and the moment Michael Brown lost his life.
Wilson claimed that Michael reached into his police SUV for the officer’s gun, and then, following an altercation near the vehicle, Michael turned his back and started moving back toward the officer.
Wilson said he feared for the safety of his life, so he shot and killed Michael Brown.
Dorian Johnson offered a different account: that Brown started running, stopping at one point with his hands up as he cried, “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!”
He added that Wilson fired several shots, and Michael, who was unarmed, collapsed to the ground.
In the midst of the conflicting accounts, many mainstream outlets rushed to portray Michael Brown negatively.
The most notable article at the time came from the New York Times with the most enraging sentence I will never forget reading: “Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel.”
It was a profile of Michael Brown discussing how he “lived in a community that had rough patches, and he dabbled in drugs and alcohol,” “had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar,” and “got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor.”
Michael Brown was not the first person who lived in a rough neighborhood, dabbled in drugs and alcohol, or had dreams of becoming a rapper. Nor was he the first person to be described as a “handful” as a child.
People are complicated and amenable to change, especially if given the chance to lead a life beyond the age of 18.
Of course, most Black people understand that no matter how angelic or not some may find us, being Black in this country means our lives can be taken by a cop for no other reason beyond they can do it and get away with it.
And we know that scenario is especially true if white cops find themselves “afraid” of us, armed or not.
None of those details about what Michael Brown did before the day he died negate that an unarmed Black teen should not have died less than 90 seconds after encountering a white police officer.
Or how infuriating it was to learn that after he was wrongly shot, his 6-foot-4 frame lay face down in the middle of the warm pavement for four hours with a stream of blood flowing down the street.
It was an ugly reminder of what little respect many in law enforcement have for Black people and our humanity.
Ferguson erupted in the days that followed Michael Brown’s shooting, and ultimately, police showed up in armored vehicles and military gear to douse protestors with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Michael Brown’s death and the events that followed helped launch the Black Lives Matter movement into the national spotlight, spearheading a nationwide conversation about police brutality in America.
Speaking with the AP, Karla Scott, a communications professor and the former African American Studies program director at St. Louis University, said of the time: “Michael Brown embodied the anger that was so obvious and evident after decades of dismissing it, of holding it back, of telling ourselves we’re going to overcome. It just became the moment we said, we can’t be polite anymore. He set fire to all of the anger that had been smoldering for centuries. And it was not just the Black community.”
In the end, though, a grand jury chose not to indict Wilson, and later, the official report from the Department of Justice claimed to have found no credible evidence to dispute officer Darren Wilson’s claims and other testimony suggests that Brown was neither holding his hands up nor turning away from Wilson when he was shot.
Wilson was never charged, leaving many, Brown’s family most of all, frustrated that justice was never served.
Michael Brown’s mother, Lezley McSpadden, and father, Michael Brown, Sr., received a $1.5 million settlement from the City of Ferguson in a federal wrongful death lawsuit in 2017, but that has not stopped the family from seeking a resolution.
In 2023, Lezley McSpadden filed a claim against the U.S. with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that the government deprived her son’s right to life.
Last year, shortly before the 10th anniversary of his death, she spoke at a hearing for the investigation.
She called on the commission to demand that the Department of Justice appoint a special prosecutor to investigate, arguing that there was racial bias in the original probes. Moreover, she calls on them to demand that Missouri’s governor appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the decisions not to prosecute Wilson.
She said that Wilson’s decision to stop her son, who was walking in the middle of the street with a friend, was “arbitrary” and “improper.”
“Primarily, I lost hope in the justice system,” McSpadden explained to commissioners.
As for her son, while others described him as “no angel,” she described him as brilliant.
“He was really great with figuring things out on his own,” she told the committee. “He was great at computers. He would have been a part of this large tech world, if Michael was still here.”
She said that his death has left a void in the family.
“My children miss him terribly. They sit around and reminisce about Mike all the time,” she added. “He never had a job. He never learned how to drive. He was just beginning his life.”
His father, Michael Brown, Sr., who acknowledged he’s still struggling, did at least take some comfort in the work being done in his son’s name.
As he recalled in one interview, he shared that his son once said the “world is going to know my name.”
“He was going to shake the world,” Brown said of his son in an interview with CBS News last year. “So, I guess that’s what we’re doing. He’s still doing the work from the grave.”
Indeed, the world does know his name, and though there have been changes made in Ferguson in the wake of his death, sadly, it’s not enough there or anywhere else in the country, as the progress to ending police killings has remained slow.
Much as that is a testament to the stubbornness of racism, it is the reason to keep Michael Brown’s name and what happened to him alive.
His family deserves justice, and the Black community deserves better from a justice system that works as a protector to some communities and a predator to others.
Michael Arceneaux is a New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book, I Finally Bought Some Jordans, was published last March.
SEE ALSO:
The Segregationist Administration: How Trump’s Team Is Systematically Dismantling Civil Rights
Op-Ed: In America, Calling A Black Child The N-Word Could Make You A Millionaire
Never Forget What Happened To Michael Brown
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