They Cant

Kill Us All

Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era

in Americas Racial Justice Movement

Wesley Lowery

Little, Brown and Company

New YorkBostonLondon

TheyCantKillUs_HCtextF1.inddiii

9/20/16 8:29:11 AM

Copyright 2016 by Wesley Lowery

Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of
copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to
produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a
theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like permission to use
material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact
permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
littlebrown.com
First edition: November 2016
Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The
Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not
owned by the publisher.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking
events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call
(866) 376-6591.
Sections of this work were adapted from articles previously published in the
Washington Post.
ISBN 9780316-312479
LCCN 2016948558
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
lsc-c
Printed in the United States of America

TheyCantKillUs_HCtextF1.inddiv

9/20/16 8:29:11 AM

CHAPTER ONE

Ferguson: A City Holds

Its Breath

he first time I saw the name Michael Brown was on Instagram.

I typically checked Instagram once or twice a week to see
old college friends partying, or journalism colleagues posting from
airports en route to an assignment. As I scrolled through my feed on
the afternoon of August 9, my finger stopped when I reached a series
of videos uploaded by Brittany Noble, a local news reporter in St.
Louis whom I consider an older sister. The clip showed a disheveled
woman screaming, crying. The police, she said, had killed her firstborn son. Over her shoulder a crowd had gathered.
I first met B
rit-tan-ney, as she always teasingly insisted we pronounce it, at one of the annual gatherings of the National Association
of Black Journalists. We were then both job-hungry college students
and quickly hit it off while discussing the feedback wed received on
our rsums from recruiters and comparing invites to the conferences
nightly receptions. Five years later, we remained part of a core group
of friends from those conferences who stayed in semifrequent touch
as we tried to navigate e ntry-level journalism jobs.
Brittany had graduated a few years earlier than me, and after
bouncing around several smaller-market television stations, shed

TheyCantKillUs_HCtextF1.indd19

9/20/16 8:29:11 AM

W E SL EY LOW ERY

settled into a gig with KMOV, the CBS affiliate in St. Louis, which
was both her hometown and that of her fianc, Mike. As they prepared for the wedding, they decided to live in a racially diverse town
not far from the city: Ferguson.
Two years after taking the gig in Missouri, Brittany was working
weekends, giving her Friday nights to the job and then, after a few
hours of sleep, heading back out into the field for e arly-Saturdayand Sunday-morning live shots. Its the type of thankless work done
by many young reporters, but she was glad to be back home.
The only thing bigger than Brittanys smile is her drive, and that
ambition meant she was often looking for a way to stand out on the
job, constantly searching for a small scoop or a neighborhood feature
that her competition might have overlooked. It didnt hurt that
she had connections. Her mother, before she retired, had been one of
the highest-ranking black women in the history of the St. Louis
Police Department. Her soontobe fatherinlaw ran a prominent
black church in the city. On many days, Brittanys email and voice
mail were full of story tips and ideas. Not all of the leads panned out,
but it wasnt rare for her to come up with a unique angle or tidbit.
Much like my own experience at the Globe, working general assignment can be a mixed bag: one day youre covering a high school graduation, the next youre camped out beside crime scene tape.
And then, of course, there are the officer-involved shootings.
Brittanys first came on July 1, 2012, at her first job at a station in
Saginaw, Michigan. A homeless black man, Milton Hall, had been
shot and killed by the police in the parking lot of a shopping plaza.
The officers responded to a 911 call about a man who had stolen
a cup of coffee from a convenience store. When they arrived, they
encountered Hall, who was carrying a knife, and they began to
argue with him. The forty-nine-year-old had a history of mental illness and had been living on the street.
Eight officers reported to the scene, and they told investigators
that when they arrived Hall threatened a female officer with the
20

TheyCantKillUs_HCtextF1.indd20

9/20/16 8:29:11 AM

THEY CANT KILL US ALL

knife and closed within a few feet of her. After a standoff of several
minutes, the o fficerswho had formed a semicircle around Hall as
he staggered forward opened fire.
With traffic driving past and several bystanders in the parking
lot, the officers shot f orty-seven bullets in total, with eleven of them
riddling Halls body. The shooting was caught on cell phone video
and soon was playing on loop on CNN. The community was outraged, they said they were going to protest and demonstrate and
blow the whole place up if these officers didnt get indicted, Brittany recalled to me years later. And then the officers didnt get
indicted, and nothing happened.
Before Ferguson, this story line was as common as it was hidden.
A community flies into rage after a questionable police shooting,
leaders hold vigils and marches, figureheads call for accountability,
and then, almost as quickly as the tragedy began, it ends. Everyone
but the grieving family moves on with their lives until the next time
a radio dispatcher puts out the call:
Need backup. Shots fired. Officer involved.
When that call came on August 9, 2014, Brittany was in St.
Louis. Having worked the early-morning Saturday shift, she was
across town preparing for her engagement photo shoot.
Hey, Brittany, you see that the police shot somebody in Ferguson? her fianc called out before handing her the phone so she could
see for herself. Perhaps he was already tiring of the engagement photos, because he knew full and well what would happen next.
In an industry dominated by white reporters and editors, young
black journalists are told early and often that theyve got to go above
and beyondshowing up unasked for a weekend shift, coming in
early and staying late on the weekdays, and always being ready, at a
moments notice, to drop everything and run toward the story. For two
years that was what Brittany, one of the only black reporters at her station and one of just a few dozen in St. Louisa major media market
had been doing. She often felt overlooked or underappreciated, but if
21

TheyCantKillUs_HCtextF1.indd21

9/20/16 8:29:11 AM

W E SL EY LOW ERY

she kept doing her job, if she kept chasing and getting the story, she
knew they couldnt ignore her and her work forever.
Brittany fired off an email to her bosses, asking if they had anyone headed to the scene. When they didnt respond, she called a producer directly.
You need me to come in? she asked.
Minutes later she landed the first major scoop of Ferguson: the emotional reaction of Michael Browns mother as she arrived at the scene.
As Brittany raced across town, residents of the Canfield Green
apartment complex began flooding the streets. The shooting had
happened on a quiet side street, in a spot surrounded by four-level
apartment buildings. As the crowds gathered, others took to windows
and porches, looking down at the chaos developing below. Within
minutes after the shooting, word spread through the surrounding
apartments, and beyond, that Browns hands were up in the air when
the fatal shots were fired by Officer Darren Wilson, who had encountered Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson while responding to a
call about two young men, matching their description, who had just
been involved in the robbery of a nearby liquor store.
As police officers scrambled to secure the scene, an enraged, agitated crowd was quickly gathering. Why is Browns body still out
there? Why was he shot and killed in the first place? And why do we
keep hearing that he had his hands up?
Get us several more units over here, one of the responding officers demanded over the police radio. Theres gonna be a problem.
Johnson and Brown had entered Ferguson Market & Liquor at
11:53 that morningwith Brown, the younger of the two men,
grabbing a t hirty-four-dollar box of Swisher Sweets and attempting
to walk out. The employee working behind the counter that day told
Brown that he had to pay for the smokes, and in response the teen
grabbed the man by the collar and shoved him. One of the stores
security cameras captured the violent exchange, an eleven-second
video clip that would be the last living image of Brown.
22

TheyCantKillUs_HCtextF1.indd22

9/20/16 8:29:11 AM

THEY CANT KILL US ALL

But in the hours and days after Brown was shot and killed by
Officer Darren Wilson, none of the residents of Ferguson knew
about the liquor store robbery. That information wouldnt come out
for days, when still-frame images from surveillance cameras were
released by Ferguson PD. In fact, in those early days, police refused
to release any information or answer any question of substance.
Why had Brown been shot and killed? Who was the officer
involved? What was the potential threat to the officer that prompted
his use of deadly force? But a vacuum of information always finds a
way to be filled, especially in a crowded apartment complex full of
dozens of people who claimed to have seen the struggle and the
shooting.
The Canfield Green apartments are a cluster of half a dozen
cream-colored buildings with green and brown trim. The thirty-
seven-acre complex contains more than 414 apartments, o ne- and
two-bedroom units, for which Canfields almost exclusively black
residents fork over about five hundred dollars a month. Its a relatively low-income sliver of Ferguson, a city that is socioeconomically
diverse. Residents complain of gang activity, of break-ins, and of
their ears too frequently seizing at the sharp cackle of gunshots.
During my first days on the ground in Ferguson, many Canfield
residents believed that B
rownafter being confronted by Wilson
for jaywalkinghad been shot in the back as he ran away. Dorian
Johnson, Browns friend who was with him when he was killed,
claimed that after an initial struggle and gunfire, Brown ran away
from Wilson, turned around, put his hands up, and shouted out,
Dont shoot! Johnson ran away after Brown and Wilson began
struggling, ducking behind a nearby vehicle as the fatal shots were
fired. An even more inflammatory rumor, later proven untrue, was
soon circulating throughout Ferguson: that Officer Wilson had
stood over Browns dying body and fired an execution shot into the
dying teens chest.
For many of those first nights after Browns death, people
23

TheyCantKillUs_HCtextF1.indd23

9/20/16 8:29:11 AM

W E SL EY LOW ERY

believed that there was video of the shooting, with rumors flying
that officers had seized residents cell phones to keep the videos from
spreading. And there was anger about the number of bullets fired by
Wilson.
Why would Wilson need to shoot Mike Brown six times? Why
didnt he have a Taser? Why did it take so long for Browns body to
be moved from the ground?
I could see how [the officer] could be intimidated, but that aint
a reason to be gunned down, not nine times, not with your hands
up, said Duane Finnie, thirty-six, a childhood friend of Browns
father and friend of the family, who was one of the first people I
interviewed after arriving in Ferguson. I just put myself in Mikes
shoes, and like, your last seconds of life youre getting executed by
somebody who is supposed to protect and serve you.
People are tired of being misused and mistreated, and this is an
outlet for them to express their outrage and anger; everyone is looking for an outlet to express their emotions, he told me on August 11,
two days after the shooting. This is a reason...all the looting and
whats going on, but people want to be heard, and they dont know
how to do it. So thats why they lash out.
Theyre not trying to let this one get swept under the table, a
friend of Finnies, who had been standing alongside him while we
spoke, chimed in.
Investigators would later conclude that Browns hands were most
likely not up and that the altercation began when the e ighteen-year-old
punched Darren Wilson after the officer, responding to the robbery
call, attempted to stop him on the street.
Whether Brown was attempting to surrender or attempting to
attack Officer Wilson when the fatal shots were fired remains murky.
The evidence shows that Hands up, dont shoota national rallying cry, the chief chorus of the dead boys defenderswas based on
a falsehood. But as anger boiled into rage, no one in Ferguson could
have known that yet.
24

TheyCantKillUs_HCtextF1.indd24

9/20/16 8:29:11 AM

THEY CANT KILL US ALL

They did know that the police in Ferguson looked nothing like
them: an a lmost-all-white force charged with serving and protecting
a majority black city. They knew all too well about the n
ear-constant
traffic tickets they were being given, and how often those tickets
turned into warrants.
And they knew that Mike Mike, the quiet kid who got his hair
cut up the street on West Florissant and who was often seen walking
around in this neighborhood, was dead.
That could be any of us. That could have been me dead on the
street! screamed Carl Union, t wenty-seven, a local DJ who refused
to leave one of the early protests despite multiple rounds of heavy
tear gas. Union said that when he saw the images of Browns body in
the street he thought of his young daughter. When he heard that
Brown had been shot by the police, he became angry and decided to
join the protest. Its like were not even human to them, Union said
through tears.
Mike Browns body remained on the hot August ground for four
and a half hoursa gruesome, dehumanizing spectacle that further
traumatized the residents of Canfield Drive and would later be cited
by local police officials as among their major mistakes.
For some, first in Ferguson and later around the nation, the spectacle of Browns body cooling on the asphalt conjured images of the
historic horrors of lynchingsthe black body of a man robbed of
his right to due process and placed on display as a warning to other
black residents.
If the police were willing not only to kill Mike Brown, residents
of Canfield Drive would ask me as I interviewed them, but also to let
his body sit out that way, what would they be willing to do to the
rest of us?
Within an hour of the shooting, word had traveled to Michael
Browns family his mother, stepfather, and father who each
individually made their way to Canfield Drive. Police had sealed off
the block, causing a bottleneck of dozens and eventually hundreds
25

TheyCantKillUs_HCtextF1.indd25

9/20/16 8:29:11 AM

W E SL EY LOW ERY

of people who began to gather at the corner at West Florissant Avenue. That was where Brittany and the videographer she had with her
parked their news van, and where she first approached Lezley
McSpadden, the slain boys mother.
Another reporter at Brittanys station was supposed to interview
the family, so initially Brittany focused on getting reaction quotes
from enraged local residents. But Browns mother was standing just
a few feet away, and it didnt look like any of the reporters were talking to her. Finally, Brittany asked one of the residents she had
intervieweda cousin of Brownsif he would make an introduction. Initially she didnt even bring her cameraman with her, assuming that her colleague had already interviewed the dead teens
mother. Instead, Brittany thought, shed upload the video to
Instagramsince that was where she had first heard the story.
You didnt have to shoot him eight times! McSpadden exclaimed
to Brittany. You just shot all through my babys body.
Brittany ended up working late into the night, transmitting live
shots for every newscast, ending with the 11:30 p.m., and watching as
the crowds that gathered became more and more frustrated and angry.
The Ferguson and St. Louis County police had sent scores of officers, some in full riot gear and tactical vehicles, to deal with the
growing crowds and to hold them back as they attempted to investigate for themselves the scene of the shooting. All of this is pretty
standard for the scene of a police shootingpolice, protesters,
angered residents and familiesbut the scale of the immediate
response from both the community and law enforcement signaled
that perhaps Ferguson would be different.
This was a scene that I had never seen before, a heartbreak that I
had never felt before from the people I was interviewing, Brittany
later told me. I just felt different. Something wasnt right. This
wasnt the typical police shooting scene.
And then, after four hours, as midday turned to late afternoon,
officers finally removed Browns body from the asphalt. They did not
26

TheyCantKillUs_HCtextF1.indd26

9/20/16 8:29:11 AM

THEY CANT KILL US ALL

address the crowds who were hungry for answers after spending
most of their Saturday hearing inflammatory rumors. People were
like: after all of that, theyre just going to leave? Brittany said.
Theyre not going to say anything? These people were hurt. As the
police began to leave, church groups started walking down Canfield
Drive, following the still-hysterical Lezley McSpadden to the spot
where crimson blood still stained the ground.
When they arrived, the groups circled around McSpadden and
her husband and began to pray, sing, and hug. Some were older folks
from the church up the road, others were younger residents who
poured out of the Canfield apartments. What had been a rambunctious crowd had composed itself to create a vigil for a violent death.
But the tranquility didnt last. As the prayer group began to
break up, the residents of Canfield began to yell. Prayer wasnt going
to fix this. Neither was singing. The police had to answer for this.
Why was Mike Brown dead? Why had his body been left out for so
long? And when would we get answers?
Amid the shouting, someone lit a Dumpster on fire. While
moments earlier desperate prayers were being sent above, now it was
the flash of flames floating into the night air.

Ferguson survived that first night. The Dumpster fire and the sound
of distant gunshots spooked police, but they were nothing compared
with what was to come.
The following day, the Ferguson Police Department still hadnt
explained what had happened or apologized for keeping Browns
body out on the ground for so long. And church groups were calling
for a march in the slain teens honor.
That Sunday afternoon, after services concluded, local pastors
and their flocks met at the spot where Brown was killed. Hundreds
showed up, surrounding newly erected memorials made of candles,
27

TheyCantKillUs_HCtextF1.indd27

9/20/16 8:29:11 AM