Leslie McSpadden
speaker
84 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Leslie McSpadden’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Joining us now from St. Louis, Michael Brown's mother, Leslie McSpadden.
Canfield is a torture site. Canfield is like ground zero for me. What they did on Canfield changed my life forever.
So many of my family members were there. Cousins, aunts, uncles. It was so many people there for Mike's birth. And the same way Mike came into this world with a lot of people around him is the same way he left. You know, so I've always felt that God gave me that baby for a reason. That's why May 20th will always be a special day to me because I had a baby. Michael Landis Darion Brown.
Everybody spells it different. Like Niecy, she's spelling Ned Poo. N-E-D Poo. They call me Neddy Poo. Her mama call me Nella Poo. Some people just call me Ned. Some people call me LeNeddy. You call me Neddy. You see what I'm saying? Like my mom may say Neddy some stuff, but it started off as Neddy Poo.
I'm still Mike's mom right now. Once you're a mother, you never forget how the mother was.
She lived in the biggest house on the block. Everybody came to her house for the holidays, and most of the neighbors were on her porch every day because she had a lot of grandkids. My grandmother had eight children. I can't even count all the grandkids, but we all migrated there. If it wasn't after school every day, it was on the weekends and most definitely on holidays.
We were just like one big family.
She's been with me through good times, bad times. She's just never left my side, so she's been more than a cousin.
really close as being cousins, sisters. We come from a family that fed the whole neighborhood. We come from a family that every holiday, they may have family coming from out of town, but somehow they ended up on our grandmother's porch.
And we ended up in the street playing court, some type of ball game, some type of high goal seat, either putting on your skates, rolling through the street and riding a bike. And our grandmother was playing polkino. Yes, we loved it.
We would walk in and out the door and pass that dining room table for hours waiting on someone to get up and let us play because we were taught to respect elders very much. So, like, you don't ask who it is. You don't say lie. You don't question. You are to be seen and not heard.
Her tying the string to our teeth into the knob and slamming the door to pull out our teeth. We weren't scared, though. And it didn't hurt. We was looking forward. You know, our mamas and daddies be like, let me get it. No, no, no. We waiting till we go over there with Granny. She gonna get it. And that's what she did. You know, that's where we went when we were sent home from school.
We didn't go home. We went to Granny's house. She always said, boiled foods make you feel better. She was a boiler pot of food type of person. You know what I'm saying? And so big pots of spaghetti like this. And we would be outside playing so hard that we didn't want to sit down and eat. So we would make spaghetti sandwiches just so we can hurry up and get back outside and play.
But she had a routine with us. And when we all spent the night, we got up at a certain time, you picked your cover up, you put it up, you got yourself together, and we went in the kitchen and this person did eggs, this person did bread, and my granny would do the meat. It's a memory that none of us ever forget because we shared all that time together. We really did. We really grew up together.
Her name was Miss Sanders, Patricia Sanders to be exact. And she would really, like, keep me in line and keep me out of trouble.
We had this common area where everybody could hang out when you had a free class or in between lunch periods. And we had phones in there. And I used to be in there sneaking on the phone. And, you know, you would think you're sneaking, but it's like she wore these high heels. She was so jazzy, okay?
I could hear her coming around the corner, and I would try to get off, and she would say, uh-uh, I see you. And she would come and take the phone and say, who is this? Do you know where she is and where she's supposed to be? I mean, she would tell all your business. And she would say, I'm going to take you to class, and I'm going to, you know, say you was with me and don't let me catch you again.
She was like that mama at school that you needed, you know? And I appreciate her. I really do. I'll never forget Ms. Sanders.
We went in the bathroom and I took it. And I remember her saying, ooh, ooh, ooh. And I was like, ooh, what? And she was like, girl, you pregnant. And I was like, no, I'm not. And I was like, oh, my God. I got to tell my mama. No, I'm going to let you tell her. You tell her. And we went to those same pay phones in school and called my mom.
And she said, April, this better be April's food joke, something like that. And she just was fussing and fussing. And I didn't even get on the phone. I was just like, girl, hang up.
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