Taking “Black Lives Matter” to CNN: An Oral History of AUC Student Protest Amid the Failure to Indict in the Killing of Mike Brown

• In Event: Including Students in Oral History Projects: Preserving Black History for Another Century

Abstract

Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was killed by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, a small city in St. Louis County, Missouri. Shot at least six times following an alleged scuffle with police, the recent high school graduate died amid witnesses to the broad-daylight killing in the working-class Canfield Green Apartments complex. Brown’s body, left to languish in his blood on the concrete for four hours, became a rallying symbol for what has arguably become the new chapter of the Long Black Freedom Struggle: the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Young activists connected the killing of Michael Brown to the video-recorded killing of Eric Garner by police-applied chokehold in New York City less than one month earlier, and they urged the nation to consider the possibility that African Americans face systemic, state-sanctioned violence at the hands of police. On November 24, 2014, a grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown. On November 25, students from the Atlanta University Center (AUC) – Morehouse College, Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University – delayed their Thanksgiving break to march from Morehouse to Atlanta-based CNN television headquarters in protest, and Clark Atlanta students hosted a campus peace rally. Centralizing student voices, this oral history project draws from interviews conducted with AUC student activists in the wake of the failure to indict Darren Wilson. Students discuss protests and the CNN march, perceived failures in the justice systems, plans for future action, and the irony of preparing for holiday festivities while coming to terms with the threat of police brutality. Situating the interviews within the context of the subsequent decision of a New York grand jury not to indict Daniel Pantaleo, the policeman central to the death of Eric Garner, and confronting a growing body of police and extra-legal killings and assaults on blacks in recent years, this paper also connects AUC “Black Lives Matter” activism with the history of Civil Rights youth activism and youth martyrdom.

Author

• Tara Lake, Independent Scholar