Yvette Nicole Brown
speaker
74 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Yvette Nicole Brown’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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August 9, 2014 changed the world. Ferguson, Missouri was the epicenter of a movement, and Mike's name became a rallying cry for justice.
But there's another side to this story that unfolded. A Story of a Family's Profound Loss While protesters filled the streets and news crews documented every update, Leslie was living a mother's worst nightmare. How do you process the most devastating loss imaginable when the entire world is watching? How do you balance your private anguish with the weight of a movement born from your loss?
From Lemonada Media and Campaign Zero, you're listening to Still My Baby. I'm Yvette Nicole Brown. You've heard versions of this defining moment in America, from the media, the police, and the protesters. But today, you're going to learn about it from the people closest to Mike, his mother Leslie, and his family.
August 9, 2014 was a typical Saturday for Leslie at Straub's, the upscale grocery store she worked at for years. While she was on break around lunchtime, she stepped outside to take a call from a coworker.
Leslie asked him to look out for Mike Mike when he was spending time over on Canfield Drive at his grandma's house. Mario promised he would.
Her co-worker Erica offered to drive her to Canfield.
It was bumper to bumper traffic all along I-70.
Neighbors and other onlookers stood in the vicinity. Then she spotted a familiar face.
Leslie saw yellow tape around the white sheet on the ground and a police officer in blue standing in front. She ran up to him.
Leslie's firstborn child was lying lifeless in the street, not even fully covered by the white sheet. Nothing would ever be the same. Meanwhile, word was spreading throughout Ferguson and the surrounding area. Leslie's friends and family, the people who loved Mike fiercely, were learning what happened. One by one, they stopped what they were doing and headed to Canfield.
Andre, Mike's brother and Leslie's youngest son, was one of the many family members that arrived on the scene on Canfield, along with his sister, Deja. Even though it was over a decade ago, he remembers it vividly. He wasn't even 10 years old yet.
In time, the family would learn the story of what happened earlier that day. According to confirmed sources, Mike and his friend were walking in the street when they were approached by Officer Darren Wilson in his police vehicle. He told them to move onto the sidewalk. Things escalated, leading to an altercation. The officer fired two shots, hitting Mike in the hand.
Mike and his friend began to run away. The officer shot six more times, and Mike, who was unarmed, stopped and turned around. The officer fired again, killing him. Later, eyewitnesses reached out to Leslie to tell her what they saw that day. Out of the many stories she heard, often conflicting accounts, one in particular really stuck with her. It was from a construction worker.
He told Leslie that what he saw that day was haunting him, affecting his sleep, his marriage, and his job.
On August 9th, Mike's body laid in the street for over four hours. At first, uncovered, exposed to the hot summer sun. All the while, the crowd continued to grow.
Leslie's cousin Kiki remembers when tensions between the growing crowd and police started to escalate even further.
Leslie and Mike's relatives continued to plead with the officers for information and begged to be allowed past the tape to get closer to Mike's body. But the police gave them nothing, and the hours crept on.
It would be four and a half hours before police removed Mike's body from the street and placed him in a dark SUV.
All of this pain washed over the family.
In the days and weeks that followed August 9th, the ripple effects of change spread outward from Ferguson and across the world. Mike's name would become world known. And it was just the beginning of Leslie's grief journey and the collective fight for justice. That's after the break.
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