Your Black Bloggers The official gathering spot for black bloggers
NORMANDY, Mo. (AP) — Michael Brown once told an uncle that the world would know his name one day, and he was right. Fifteen months after the black 18-year-old’s killing by a white Ferguson police officer made him a key figure in the debate over the treatment of blacks by U.S. law enforcement, though, Brown lies buried in relative obscurity.
Brown is among the most notable residents of 160-year-old St. Peter’s Cemetery, but there is no headstone marking his grave. Instead the burial plot — Section 10, Block F, Lot 12, Grave 4 — is visible only when gazing down at a concrete slab simply spray-painted in orange with “MB.”
Other matters have interfered in getting the permanent headstone in place, said Lyah LeFlore, vice president of the Michael O.D. Brown “We Love Our Sons & Daughters” Foundation that Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, helped launch in her late son’s memory. Among the distractions: The unfolding wrongful-death lawsuit that McSpadden and Brown’s father filed against Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb’s former police chief and Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Brown during an August 2014 confrontation.
The cost presumably isn’t an issue: In the weeks after Brown’s death, hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised through fundraising websites to defray the family’s funeral, burial, travel and living expenses.
“Everybody has to do things kind of at their own pace,” LeFlore said of efforts to mark Brown’s grave. McSpadden “just wants something beautiful, poetic and wonderful in her son’s memory. It has just taken time.”
