Michael Brown’s mother on her son’s legacy and her new book about his life
Nearly two years after Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Mo., his mother, Lezley McSpadden, is out with a new memoir about her life, her son’s legacy and what justice would look like for him. On May 10, 2016, McSpadden spoke to Yahoo News’ Paul Beban on “Yahoo News Live” about the new book, Ferguson’s first African-American police chief, appearing in a new Beyoncé music video and her support for Hillary Clinton.
On Ferguson’s new police chief, Delrish Moss, who was sworn in on Monday, making him the first African-American to lead the city’s embattled police department, McSpadden was not concerned about his race. She told Beban, “The race of the chief means nothing. It’s the act of the person.” She continued, “You just want someone that’s just going to get in there and do the right things.”
What would her slain son think of all that has transpired since his death? McSpadden told Beban, “I think he would be amazed. It’s — you know, my son made a statement that the world would know his name, and he wasn’t speaking in this manner. You know, he wanted to be a producer and make music, and that was part of the many things he wanted to do … but I think he would be amazed.” She continued, “I really do think he would encourage other kids to do the same thing, you know, be influenced, be inspired to make change, to move forward and see better days, because I don’t think any of these children out here, including myself when I was growing up, knew exactly what type of world we were living in.”
McSpadden also weighed in on President Obama’s commencement speech at Howard University over the weekend, where he told the crowd of largely African-American students, “You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy.” McSpadden, who has become an activist since her son’s death, agreed with the president. She said, “What [Obama] is saying is absolutely right, and I agree. And like I’m saying, people were out there protesting and marching, but something comes behind that. You have to do more than that. We got their attention, now we have to act to get the answers. And some people want things to change overnight, and they don’t change overnight.” She continued, “Nothing has changed for me over the night but the fact that there’s a big part of my family missing, and that’s my first son. So what am I going to do? Can I protest and march every day? No, I have to have conversations with people, I have to start conversations and I have to keep conversations going.”
Did Obama do enough in the aftermath of her son’s death? McSpadden said, “I feel that he did what he could do, and that’s what I want people to understand about people that are powerful like him, [they] have people underneath [them]. And when those people go out to do their job they bring back a report, and he has to read that report to all of us that are listening, and we may not agree with it, he may not agree with it, but that’s what he’s there to do.”
McSpadden also told Beban why she backed Clinton in the current race for president: “I endorsed Hillary Clinton because her private, personal message to me about my concerns and how she would implement those into her plan resonated with me. I also had a conversation with Bernie [Sanders] before I made my endorsement, but he wasn’t able to tell me if he was ready to move on my concerns from what happened to my son if he was elected president.”
Finally, McSpadden told what it was like to be in Beyoncé’s new video along with Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton; Eric Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr; and Oscar Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson. McSpadden’s reaction: “Wow. She made us feel special. She made us feel heard and she let us know that our kids were important, they did matter.”
