She stood on top of a car, surrounded by a sea of supporters. “I’ve been here my whole life; I ain’t never had to go through nothing like this,” she said before sinking her face into her hands in sorrow.
Now McSpadden, 39, is attempting to turn her sorrow and anger into action as she seeks election Tuesday night for a seat on the Ferguson City Council. The position would give her a role in overseeing the very police department whose officer killed her son.
She faces the longtime incumbent for the seat, Keith Kallstrom, who is white, and Fran Griffin, a black mother who has been deeply involved in reform efforts in Ferguson since the death of Brown, who was 18.
The election marks McSpadden’s latest effort to effect change in the name of her son. She has made appearances with other black mothers who lost their children to violence, including on stage at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. She has also testified before the Missouri Legislature.
“I wanted to go back and do something right in a place that did something so very wrong to my son, and I think that’s what my son would want as well,” McSpadden said about her candidacy in an interview with The Associated Press.
About a year ago, she moved from a nearby community to Ferguson’s third ward, a predominantly black part of town that includes the apartment complex where her son was killed.
The police officer who shot him, Darren Wilson, was cleared of criminal wrongdoing on both the state and federal level but resigned from the police force.
The killing helped to spark a national movement for police accountability. It also led to a Justice Department investigation that found that the police and municipal court system routinely violated the rights of black residents with disparities in traffic stops and the use of force, among other things.
That report, which came during President Barack Obama’s time in office, led city leaders to reach an agreement with federal officials in which they agreed to take steps to reform the city’s legal system.
Brown’s killing also helped to change the makeup of the Ferguson City Council, which had just one black member at the time of the shooting. Now, three of the six council members are black; the mayor is white.
One black council member elected after Brown’s killing, Wesley Bell, recently defeated the white incumbent county prosecutor who had overseen the grand jury that declined to indict Wilson.
Griffin, one of McSpadden’s opponents in the election, moved to Ferguson in 2005 from her hometown, St. Louis, so that her children could have better educational opportunities, she said. She had long experienced some of the disparities that came with being black in the St. Louis suburb — she was constantly stopped by the police while driving, and many of her family members refused to visit her because of their concerns about the police, she said.
After Brown was killed, Griffin, 38, regularly attended street protests in Ferguson. When the city reached the agreement with federal authorities, known as a consent decree, Griffin joined a committee created to help revise local policies and practices. The committee has contributed to the overhauling of policies pertaining to police searches, the use of force, and dash and body cameras, she said.
“I have compassion and empathy for what she went through as a mother because I don’t wish that pain on anybody,” Griffin said of McSpadden. But she added that the city needed a representative who “a) is aware of the issues that are going on; b) has been actively working toward creating the change; c) has a connection to the community, is accessible to the community.”
If McSpadden wins, she would become the second black mother who lost her son in a contentious shooting to be elected to office within the past year.
In Georgia, Lucy McBath won a congressional seat last year. A man fatally shot her son, Jordan Davis, in 2012 in a dispute over loud music. That man, Michael Dunn, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.