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by Edgar T. Jones (Author)
A live video was shared on social media when Mike Brown was murdered that I have not seen since the day it was shared.
I saw the officer shoot him in the head after he was already laid out on the ground from being shot while running away. This heartless treatment could not have been committed upon an unarmed human being who was seen as a person, like a neighbor or even just a familiar face from the neighborhood. What or who did the police and the county prosecutor see Mike Brown to be when his murder was dismissed like the removal of a pest?
While the world has gotten smaller due to technology and other innovations people have somehow become less and less human to one another. We see everything through a screen that filters out feelings and essential realities like the fact that each person has a history and life connections. The challenges of life are many but that's how we know that we are alive when we overcome one at a time. I wonder what this world would be like if MLK had survived his wound and even Mike Brown. Could we have been better next door neighbors to them?
As small as this world has become no one is any further away than our own next door neighbor, so in Edgar Jones's story, he hopes you see what his life was like being the Boy Next Door to Ferguson.
Boy Next Door to Ferguson is about an ordinary Black boy who struggles in every area, including speaking, from birth. The greatest lesson learned from living will be that every life matters if we only take the time to care. The humorous details of growing up next door to Ferguson with the village of Black people that made up Kinloch, Missouri, will surprise those who can't relate to 50 years of searching for God's blessing just to see it's been all around us all of the time.
