Detroit never recovered. And that is the future that beckons us all if our first demand today is not for peace and order, and then for justice for Brown’s family and Darren Wilson, according to the rule of law.
Washington DC, during the Martin Luther King Riots of 1968: not a “militarized” police officer, but an actual soldier.
“America is on trial,” said Rev. Al Sharpton from the pulpit of Greater St Mark’s Family Church in Ferguson, Missouri.
At issue, the shooting death of Michael Brown, Saturday a week ago, on the main street of that city of 22,000, a neighbor community to Jennings, where this writer lived in the mid-1960s.
Brown, an 18-year-old African-American, was shot multiple times by Darren Wilson, a 28-year-old white police officer with an unblemished record in six years on the force in Jennings and Ferguson.
From his patrol car, Wilson ordered Brown out of the street where he was walking and blocking traffic. A fight followed. Wilson appears to have been punched in the face. One police report says that there was a struggle for the officer’s gun.
According to Brown’s companion, however, after he was first shot, he threw up his hands and yelled, “Don’t shoot. I surrender.” Then Wilson gunned him down.
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