The day was warm and sunny. It was like any other August day. I was preparing for my first semester of graduate school and decided to take a break from my preparation by scrolling through my Twitter timeline. There were the normal Twitter topics and jokes going on but, it wasn’t a normal day. The first tweet was that a someone’s friend was just murdered. The next was an image of a cop standing over a body. More tweets started flooding the timeline. I began clicking and scrolling to see what information I could find. What happened? Who is that? What is going on? Then he was identified. Michael “Mike” Brown, 18-years-old and unarmed. An officer (who was later identified as Darren Wilson) was standing over Michael. His body lay in the Missouri heat uncovered and bloodied. A crowd had formed. The police were more concerned about crowd control than moving Michael’s body. They let this young kid lay in the street, like a dog, for four hours. As the outrage grew police brought out K-9 units. It looked like a scene out of the Civil Rights Movement. I was glued to my Twitter account. Retweeting and reading all day and night. I was sick to my stomach.
The next day the images and videos became worse. I was glued to links streaming live video and saw what looked more like war. Tear gas, tanks, armored vehicles, police in riot gear with weapons I had only seen on battlefields. Except, this wasn’t Iraq or Afghanistan. This was Ferguson, Missouri in the United States of America. A country who prides itself on the words, “Liberty and Justice for All.” Well, unless you’re a black person living here. For ten whole nights I watched black people, some protestors, and some just standing in their own yards, be attacked by the very people who are sworn to protect and serve them. The National Guard was even called to the city. Not to protect the people the police were attacking, but to protect the police. No one in that crowd was holding automatic weapons. No one in the crowd was wearing body armor. Yet, they were being protected while the people of their city were being brutalized. These violent acts did not go unnoticed. The world was watching.
I could barely pay attention during the work day. I was attached to my Twitter account. More so than I had ever been. I made sure every person who followed me was aware of what was going on. I even had a friend from undergrad reach out and say he was glad that I was keeping the story alive via my account. However, being so immersed in what was happening in Ferguson, was causing sleep to come slowly. There were nights that falling asleep meant I would see the faces of protestors running from tear gas. I could hear them screaming and yelling in my dreams.
That was one year ago. On August 9, 2014 the death of Michael “Mike” Brown became the straw that broke the camel’s back; it shook up the world. We know that Michael Brown wasn’t the first to be murdered because of the color of his skin. Eric Garner’s choke hold death happened a month before and countless other black men and women had been murdered prior to him. So what was it about Michael Brown’s murder that made our silent screams become much more public? Why, even after the world watched Eric Garner scream, “I can’t breathe” did the tide turn? I don’t know a solid answer to that question. What I do know is that I hear the words of Langston Hughes’ poem entitled, Warning. One of the lines of the poem reads, “…beware the day they change their mind…” and Michael Brown became the reason we did. His body laying in the street as if he were no more than trash, turned smoke into fire. And when the Grand Jury returned with the announcement that there would be no indictment against Darren Wilson, that fire that seemed to only have ignited in Ferguson, started to roar all over the country.
Since the death of Michael Brown there have been many more black men and women murdered. Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Akai Gurley, Eric Harris, Sam DuBose, Sandra Bland, the Charleston Nine, and names I cannot even remember. That’s terrible. What makes it worse, is that nothing has seemed to change. Police are still trigger happy and abusive when interacting with black people. A fear as old as fire and rope still exists and went from being a private fear amongst the black community, to a public fear that is being ridiculed. We yell, “Black lives matter” and are met with, “No! All lives matter.” I want to say this because I’m not sure why it is such a hard concept to grasp. If all lives mattered, there would be no need to say that black lives matter. If all lives matter, then the police and white America wouldn’t treat us like we are animals. Being black in America is like standing in room, screaming as loud as you can, and no one even blinks. Being black in America means living in a place that sees you as nothing more than something to be feared, if you’re a man, or something to be sexualize if you’re a woman.
Unspoken rules of how black people have to live their lives became public when people finally started to listen. One would think that some understanding would develop. Yet, that hasn’t been the case. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of white people who are “woke” and stand in solidarity with all that is going on. I’m not speaking to them. I’m speaking to the ones who continually say, maybe he should have cooperated, maybe she should have put out her cigarette, he should have stopped walking. I’m talking to the ones who think the Confederate Flag is heritage and not hate. I’m talking to the ones who say all lives matter. And, don’t get me wrong, there are some black people out there who spout the same nonsense. To them I say, trust and believe, your cooperation won’t save your life. Stop thinking it will before it’s too late.
A year ago, the death of Michael Brown changed my life. I knew what I was going to study in graduate school the moment Trayvon Martin was murdered. Michael Brown, and every other person killed before and after him, solidified it. August 9, 2014 is a day I will never forget. I was changed forever. Even though there’s a new name to mourn every 28 hours, I’m a firm believer that black people will make it through. We always have. We can make a way out of no way, no matter the circumstance.
In the words of Kendrick Lamar, “Do you hear me, do you feel me? We gon’ be alright!”