Just after noon on Aug. 9, 2014, a white police officer named Darren Wilson shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown Jr., in Ferguson, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. Though accounts of the shooting have varied, it sparked weeks of intense protests in Ferguson as long-simmering racial tensions hit their boiling point. People who had never met Brown rallied together from across St. Louis and the country to protest his death.
Though law enforcement officers often ended the protests with tear gas and rubber bullets, the tragedy of Michael Brown is not just a story about police. It is the story of a mother’s grief and a father’s anguish. It is the story of a community’s anger, confusion, uncertainty and passion.