Witness To History: The 1st Interview With Ferguson Uprising Leader, John Collins Muhammad, After Prison

Source: JOSHUA LOTT / Getty

Welcome to the fourth episode of Witness to History, which this year looks at Ferguson, Missouri 10 years after a Black unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by a white former police officer, Darren Wilson, on Aug. 9, 2014.

We return to Ferguson to remember the life of the young man who was two days from starting college when he was killed and to remind ourselves and everyone we reach that police killings have risen every single year since Michael was killed; the work must continue.

We return remembering the extraordinary–and rare–protests in Ferguson and the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan Area that sparked years of national and international protests against police violence in Black communities. And we return to honor the equally extraordinary and brave young people who put their lives on the line to demand justice.

Witness to History: Ferguson 10, is co-produced by our colleague, Tory Russell, who initiated and led the uprising and who continues to organize and document the still targeted and harmed lives of the people who are his family, neighbors and friends. One of those people, John Collins Muhammad—JCM—is Tory’s guest this week.

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More: Previous episodes and seasons of Witness to History

JCM was among those who led the uprising with Tory—and among those who were tear-gassed by law enforcement agencies, surveilled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and whose job was taken as a result of his speaking out against the history of Ferguson and St. Louis County’s deadly force used against Black people.

Was Collins Muhammad continually targeted by law enforcement?

Three years after the uprising, in 2017, JCM became the youngest person and only Muslim ever elected to the Board of Aldermen of the City of St. Louis. He was just 25. Four years after that he was reelected, praised by his constituents for his tireless support of Black people, including successfully getting a Ban the Box law passed, opening up the job market for formerly incarcerated and convicted people, opening up a 24-hour emergency homeless shelter during the bitter cold of 2018’s winter and sponsoring the legislation that created the $1 housing program that gave participants an 18-month lease to rehabilitate and then forever own a property. More, during COVID at the top of his second term, JCM was critical in the passage of the bill that allocated more than $300 million in federal funding to the City for COVID relief and more than $50 million for the city’s residents who needed utility, rental, and mortgage assistance.

In May of 2022, along with two colleagues including the then Board of Alderman President, Lewis Reed, JCM was indicted for bribery and accepting gifts in exchange for supporting incentives that would benefit an unnamed development. While JCM pleaded guilty, admitted publicly “making mistakes” and served time in federal prison, the entire process struck a particularly harsh chord with Black community members who remembered well the grand jury returning no true bill in the case of killer police officer, Darren Wilson whose story about what happened at noon on Aug. 9, 2014, was widely disputed by witnesses–and by any casual read of testimony, absolutely incredulous, Ezra Klein wrote for Vox back in 2014. He didn’t even try to offer anything believable, but then again, it wasn’t as though the prosecutor needed to. The outcome seemed set before Wilson ever walked into a courthouse.

In JCM’s first sit down since his release from custody last month, he and Tory recall 2014 and all that’s happened since–and the profound pain of all that hasn’t.

The Night Ferguson Erupted