Michael Brown Sr. steps out of a white Yukon at the Top Notch Barber and Beauty salon on Chambers Road. He's here for his weekly trim.
Everyone knows him, including the customers, and even if they didn't, they'd recognize him instantly. He cuts an imposing figure, tall like the 6-foot-4 son whose death propelled him unwittingly into the headlines.
Through the necessary niceties and greetings, Brown, 38, rarely lets a smile slip. When he does, the florescent glare of the overhead lights glints off his grill.
Michael Brown Sr. has not cut his beard since the day his son died in Ferguson, August 9, 2014. This is a photograph from late April. Recently, he said he would cut it when he sees signs of justice.
"Hey, hey," he says, shaking the hand of barbershop owner Gregg Davis. Another friend asks if Brown wants a drink.
"Snapple," he says.
Barber Anthony Mallory has been cutting Brown's hair for years, since Brown was 13. These days, Mallory makes sure his client's clean-shaven head stays shiny; the trickier task is trimming around Brown's beard, long and thick enough to pass muster in the most conservative mosque.
Last month, Michael Brown Sr. visited his barber -- but not to have his beard cut.
"My strength is in my beard," Brown says. "It's almost 1 year old."
He stopped cutting it on August 9, 2014 -- the day his son died.
"Every strand of hair means something," he says, settling into the barber's chair.
Mallory drapes a black and white printed cape over Brown, covering up his red T-shirt with his son's face emblazoned across the front. The back reads "Chosen For Change," the nonprofit he launched in his son's memory to empower black youth.
The barber gets into a groove, electric clippers gliding back and forth over Brown's head, before I ask about the upcoming anniversary.
The question takes Brown back to that August day when it was hot and sticky as it is this evening, the haze so thick that the air-conditioning vents are blowing puffy clouds.
He had stood waiting, numb, about half a mile from here on Canfield Drive, with his wife of three weeks, Calvina. He rushed there after the police called him and his son's mother, Lesley McSpadden. They all stood before a body covered by a sheet, surrounded by police cars, flashing lights, yellow crime scene tape and a crowd that grew larger by the minute.
He was there for four hours and 32 minutes before the sheet was lifted and he saw his son, and what he did not want to believe was confirmed. His 18-year-old boy, named after him, had been shot dead by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson.
One year later, Brown utters the same words he uttered then: "I should have been there to protect him."
Michael Brown was just 18 when he was killed.
From the afternoon of August 9 to the funeral of "Mike Mike" 16 days later, Brown felt as though he were in a trance. On the funeral program, he wrote:
"I think of you day and night and just wish I was there to save you from harm. I always told you I would never let anything happen to you. And that's why it hurts sooooo much. I will never let you die in my heart."
When the casket was finally lowered into the ground at St. Peter's Cemetery, Brown let out a pitched scream of anguish.
No more jokes. No more smiles. No more tussling with his big, burly son. No more talk of the future.
That's how every day has been since. Empty.
Empty through the months of anguish and protest and violence in Ferguson, through a grand jury decision not to indict Wilson, a scathing Department of Justice investigation report and the deaths of other black men across America. Empty as he led marchers on the streets and watched a movement blossom around the memory of his son.He is thankful his son's death was not in vain, that Mike Mike launched a discussion for the ages that perhaps will lead to the change he thinks is needed in America. Perhaps one day, black parents won't have to have difficult talks with their sons -- like he did -- about how to behave in front of police.
This is a topic burning in the forefront of Brown's mind but especially so now, a few days after returning from protests in Chicago and a meeting of the Black Lives Matter movement in Cleveland. He has traveled to other cities as well, including a pilgrimage to Selma, Alabama, earlier this year on the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday."
Selma gave him chills. "You can feel all that in your soul," he says.
He stood and listened to Barack Obama give what many believe was the President's most powerful speech to date. In it, the President acknowledged the nation had a long way to go to defeat racism but also noted the many gains that had been hard won.
"What happened in Ferguson may not be unique," Obama said, "but it's no longer endemic. It's no longer sanctioned by law or custom, and before the civil rights movement, it most surely was."
That may be true but in Brown's view, the law failed him and his family. And other black families. That's why he keeps going from city to city, from protest to protest.
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