Melissa McKinnies was a Ferguson uprising fixture. It’s for this reason that the St. Louis mother believes that one of her sons was lynched in their backyard. Here are her words.

Before Michael Brown Jr. became an international symbol of racialized police violence, he was an 18-year-old who cracked jokes, made music and planned for his future. Here, a deeply personal reflection by his dad on the fifth anniversary of his killing.

It comes on the heels of the California attorney general’s decision to not file criminal charges against the officers identified in the shooting.

Demonstrators were taken into custody while protesting the decision not to prosecute two Sacramento cops who fatally shot the unarmed Black man in March 2018.

The former Chicago Police Department officer could be back on the street in just over three years.