FERGUSON, Mo. — Canfield Drive is the kind of winding, tree-lined street that feels safe to walk in the middle of — especially on a hot summer day.
On a recent steamy afternoon, the loudest noise on Canfield came from girls playing in the small field of grass beside one of the several apartment complexes lining the street.
Only the discreet bronze plaque in the sidewalk signifies that this quiet block is where, just before noon on a similarly steamy Saturday in August 2014, a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, leaving his bleeding corpse to lie on the hot pavement for four hours.
The plaque bears a copy of the picture that was widely shared in the media, of 18-year-old Michael Brown in his cap and gown on graduation day, and reads in part: “I would like the memory of Michael Brown to be a happy one. He left an afterglow of smiles when he was done.”
In the telling and retelling of the story of Brown, whose last minutes have been analyzed and disputed endlessly (did he have his hands up when he was shot? What happened in the convenience store just before he was stopped?) those four hours have taken on enormous symbolic significance.
To some of Ferguson’s African-American residents, who make up more than two-thirds of the population, the decision to leave Brown’s body in full view of neighbors and passersby, including members of his family, was an indication of how little the black teen’s life mattered to the police.
For others, the open-air crime scene wasn’t just inconsiderate or disrespectful, but motivated by something far more malicious.
“For the police to shoot somebody and leave him laying in the street in the heart of a community, in front of his family and friends and neighbors…to me, that was tantamount to slavery,” said Rev. Tommie Pierson, whose Greater Saint Mark Family Church was a hub for protesters in the days and months after Brown’s death.