Ferguson’s visible corpse made the value gap painfully concrete

Evidence

When Michael Brown, the eighteen-year-old teenager killed by Darren Wilson of the Ferguson, Missouri, police department, was left dead in the street for four and a half hours with gunshot wounds to the head and body, members of that community saw clearly and felt painfully the undeniable fact that they were valued less. This horrific incident amplified their lived experience. Daily assaults on their humanity by police. Inadequate schools. Crippling unemployment and poverty. Injustices that were all plainly obvious but completely ignored. Now the body of one of their own lay dead for all to see. Think of the irreparable harm done to the psyches of the children in the Canfield Green apartments who saw him in the street. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 74

Categorization

• SHARE: The Canfield Green children detail is a specific, striking image worth forwarding to someone writing about trauma or the Ferguson protests.