Lessons from Ferguson, 10 Years Later

Aug 7, 2024

On Aug. 9, 2014, a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed a Black teenager named Michael Brown in the middle of the street. His body lay where it fell for . Residents posted details about the gruesome killing to social media and called local news outlets, and soon protests began, which ballooned into what became known as the .听

Brown鈥檚 killing alerted the nation to the fact that Ferguson鈥檚 Black residents had been to decades of systemic harassment, targeting, and discrimination by police. The slogan , which had been coined a year earlier when Trayvon Martin鈥檚 killer was acquitted, became an international rallying cry for racial justice.

Missouri State Senator Brian Williams grew up in Ferguson, and in the wake of the uprising he led the passage of several state-level police reforms. He recently also became the executive director of the , which was created in 2015 as a direct response to the Ferguson uprising. Williams reflected on the 10th anniversary of Brown鈥檚 killing with 大象传媒 Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on 大象传媒 Presents: Rising Up With Sonali.

Sonali Kolhatkar joined 大象传媒 in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of聽大象传媒 Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute鈥檚 Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of聽Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice聽(2023) and聽Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence聽(2005). Her forthcoming book is called聽Talking About Abolition聽(Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women鈥檚 Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master鈥檚 in Astronomy from the University of Hawai鈥檌, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on 鈥淢y Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host鈥� in her 2014聽聽of the same name.