Blind Plea - Introducing: Still My Baby

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

This week we’re sharing a powerful new podcast from Lemonada Media and Campaign Zero: Still My Baby. This powerful, intimate limited series that tells the untold story of one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history - the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.  This isn’t your typical courtroom drama or news recap. This is a mother’s story. It’s a raw, deeply intimate portrait of Mike’s family told by those closest to him. The series traces the years before August 9th, 2014– before everything changed. Still My Baby follows the family’s journey through grief and healing in the aftermath of tragedy, and how they rebuild themselves to where they are today. We’re going to play you a clip from the first episode. After you listen, search for Still My Baby wherever you get your podcasts or head to https://lemonada.lnk.to/StillMyBabyfdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

LEMONADA Canfield is a torture site. Canfield is like ground zero for me. What they did on Canfield changed my life forever. On August 9, 2014, police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown on Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri, setting off a 400-day uprising that captured the world. This is for Mike Brown! This is for Mike Brown! There is growing outrage tonight after an unarmed African-American teenager was shot and killed by police in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri. Police in riot gear used tear gas and bean bag rounds to disperse crowds.

Hands up! Don't shoot! Hands up! Don't shoot! The world knows Mike Brown because of August 9th and the protests that followed his murder. But for Mike Brown's mother Leslie, May 20th is where she always begins his story. So many of my family members were there, cousins, aunts, uncles. It was so many people there for Mike's

birth. In the same way Mike came into this world with a lot of people around him, it's the same way he left. You know, so I've always felt that God gave me that baby for a reason. That's why May 20th will always be a special day to me because I had a baby, Michael Orlandis Darion Brown. From Lemonada Media and Campaign Zero, you're listening to Still My Baby. This is the story of Michael Orlandis Darion Brown. He was so fun, loving, just a caring kid. He had a great sense of humor. He was funny. And I know that it wasn't nothing for him to crack a joke

or make you smile. He put others before himself at times. He would just always, you know, try to make you feel welcome. He was just a cool you know, trying to make you feel welcome. He was just a cool, laid-back dude. It's the story of his family, as they were before he died and as they are today, still piecing things back together through their grief. And it's the story of his mom, Leslie, or as many call her, Nettie Poo. Everybody spells it different.

Like, Nece, she's spelling Ned Poo. N-E-D Poo. They call me Nettie Poo. Everybody spells it different. Like, Nece, she's spelling Ned Poo. N-E-D Poo. They call me Nettie Poo. Her mama call me Nella Poo. Some people just call me Ned. Some people call me Lil Nettie. You call me Nettie. You see what I'm saying?

Like, my mom might say Nettie some soul, but it started off as Nettie Poo. Here's the thing. We shouldn't actually know Leslie's name or her nicknames. Same with Mike Brown, because they should both be living life as normal, everyday people. That's all Leslie wanted. But her life veered far from normal on August 9th, 2014, when her son was murdered. More than 10 years later, with the world having moved on,

Leslie is still Mike's mom, fighting to bring him justice and longing for the normalcy they once had, those everyday, mundane moments. I'm still Mike's mom right now. moments. I'm still Mike's mom right now. Once you're a mother, you never forget how to mother. So we're tracing her journey as a young mom who struggled to build a stable, typical life

for her family, only to see it torn apart on a public stage and as an advocate and a mother today, rebuilding after unimaginable loss. Leslie McSpadden grew up in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1980s and 90s, and spent a lot of her childhood at her grandmother's house on Acme and Albertine Avenues. She lived in the biggest house on the block.

Everybody came to her house for the holidays, and most of the neighbors were on her porch every day because she had a lot of grandkids. My grandmother had eight children. I can't even count all the grandkids, but we all migrated there. If it wasn't after school every day, it was on the weekends and most definitely on holidays.

We were just like one big family. Of all her cousins, Leslie's favorite was Kiki. They're only a year apart and they always clicked. We've just always been there for each other. She's been with me through good times, bad times. She's just never left my side. So she's been more than a cousin. Really more than cousins.

Like we've been there for each other, like really close as being cousins, sisters. We come from a family that fed the whole neighborhood. We come from a family that every holiday they may have family coming from out of town but somehow they ended up on our grandmother's porch. We ended up in the street playing court, some type of ballgame, some type of high go seat, either putting on your skates, rolling through the street and riding a bike. And our grandmother was playing Pokino.

Yes, we loved it. She taught us how to play Pokino. We would walk in and out the door and pass that dining room table for hours waiting on someone to get up and let us play because we were taught to respect elders very much. So like, you don't ask who it is, you don't say lie, you don't question, you are to be seen and not heard. That's the culture Leslie, her siblings, Kiki, and all her cousins were raised in.

Granny was the matriarch of the family, and she was always in charge. Her tying the string to our teeth into the knob and slamming the door to pull out our teeth, we weren't scared, though, and it didn't hurt. We was looking forward. You know, our mamas and daddies be like, let me get it.

No, no, no. We waiting till we go over there with Granny. She gonna get it. And that's what she did. That's where we went when we were sent home from school. We didn't go home, we went to Granny's house. She always said, boiled foods make you feel better. She was a boiler pot of food type of person.

You know what I'm saying? And so big pots of spaghetti like this and we would be outside playing so hard that we didn't want to sit down and eat so we would make spaghetti sandwiches just so we can hurry up and get back outside and play. But she had a routine with us and when we all spent the night we got up at a certain time you picked your cover up, you put it up, you got yourself together, and we went in the kitchen and this person did eggs, this person did bread, and my granny would do the meat.

It's a memory that none of us ever forget because we shared all that time together. We really did. We really grew up together. Leslie always had her family. And even though she wasn't raised with a lot of money, Leslie says her mother always kept a roof over their heads and the lights on.

And Leslie knew she could rely on Kiki to give her shoe advice when she got to buy a new pair once a year. All the togetherness happened at their granny's house. And it was from her house that Leslie and her siblings waited early in the morning for the first of two buses to take them to Ladue School District. So early, it was dark out.

Ladue was part of the DSEG program, short for Desegregation. Though the district was predominantly white, Leslie didn't feel out of place. There were a lot of other Black students, and she had teachers she felt close to and connected with, including one very special teacher in high school. Her name was Ms. Sanders, Patricia Sanders to be exact, and she will really like keep me in line and keep me out of trouble. Leslie says Ms. Sanders really cared for her while also keeping Leslie on her toes. We had this common area where everybody could hang out when you had a free class or in between lunch periods.

And we had phones in there. And I used to be in there sneaking on the phone. And you know, you would think you're sneaking, but it's like she wore these high heels. She was so jazzy, okay? I could hear her coming around the corner and I would try to get off and she would say, uh-uh, I see you.

And she would come and take the phone and say, who is this? Do you know where she is and where she's supposed to be? I mean, she would tell all your business. And she would say, I'm gonna take you to class and I'm gonna, you know, say you was with me and don't let me catch you again. She was like that mama at school that you needed, you know?

And I appreciate her. I really do. I'll never forget Ms. Sanders. When Leslie was 14 and just a freshman, she met a boy, Mike Brown, who we will be calling Big Mike. Kiki, Leslie's favorite cousin, is actually the one who introduced the two of them. Me and Mike, we went to school together. So he was originally my friend. We went to Normandy. So he was originally my friend. We went to Normandy.

Leslie went to Ladoo. So we used to have these crazy young house parties. He attended a house party that, of course, my cousin Leslie was invited to because she's my family member, and that's how they kind of met there at a house party of mine. It wasn't just any party. It was Kiki's sweet 16th birthday jam, and the basement was packed.

Big Mike was an upperclassman. In Leslie's 2016 book, Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil, she describes him as tall, with a deep voice, wearing dickies and a t-shirt. They danced at the party, and she gave him her number. Later that night when she was home, she laid in bed excited, thinking about Big Mike maybe becoming a real boyfriend. In the weeks and months that followed, the two of them talked on the phone for hours. Sometimes Leslie would wake up tangled in the phone cord. He met her mother, she met his parents,

and they became girlfriend and boyfriend. Even though Leslie's mom knew they were together, Leslie says she never got the sex talk, so she didn't really know how to protect herself. When Leslie was in 10th grade and missed her period, she turned to her good friend April, who brought a pregnancy test to school for her. We went into the bathroom and I took it, and I remember her saying, ooh, ooh, ooh, and I was like, ooh, what? And she was like, girl, you pregnant? And I was like, no, I'm not.

And I was like, oh my God, I gotta tell my mama? No, I'ma let you tell her, you tell her. And we went to those same pay phones in school and called my mom. Her mom picked up the phone and April broke the news. And she said, April, this better be April's food joke, something like that. And she just was fussing and fussing.

And I didn't even get on the phone. I was just like, girl, hang up. As Leslie and Kiki remember it, no one in the family really took the news of Leslie's pregnancy seriously at first. I don't think anybody believed me, like, because they just couldn't believe that I was having sex. Yeah.

I didn't know anything about it. I just was pregnant. We all were. That's why we didn't believe her. Yeah, I'm telling you, that's the God's honest truth. Like, I was never really talked to about that. I was dealing with somebody, and we was in a relationship. So I was with my boyfriend, girlfriend, my mom,

knew his mom, knew when we spent time together. And then for, you know, I was scared. I didn't know what was wrong with me. But one thing that I did know was I want to have this baby. She knew what she wanted, but being pregnant was hard. Leslie felt sick during her entire pregnancy, but continued to go to school. Her belly grew bigger and bigger, so no formal announcement was needed. She says the school let her go to the nurse for first period

and gave her a key for the elevator. They worked with me because I was definitely trying. I was showing up and I was giving it my best, but I did not use it as an excuse. You know, I still did what I was supposed to do when I showed up to school. But, of course, you know, I would fall asleep in some classes and people would wake me up and tell me,

oh, they were talking about, they were pointing. You know, I would go through that, of course, you know, but hey, it comes with the territory, you know, of being a teen mom. Though her mom initially didn't want her to keep the baby, she ended up being supportive throughout the pregnancy and took Leslie to all her doctor's appointments. So May 20, 1996, I had a doctor's appointment and my doctor's name was Dr. Ikuno. He was

so nice to me. And I would go in, my mom always went to the doctor with me, and he said, come here, come here, look, look. I was so embarrassed. He telling her to look down there. And he said, she's going to have this baby tonight. You see this? She has lost her plug. I was like, what is a plug? What is a plug? So I go home, and my mom say, come on.

We going to Granny's house. I went to my grandma's house. She had made a large pot of spaghetti. And I remember her saying to me, eat this now because when you go to the hospital they're not gonna let you eat my first baby. So I was like, really? So I ate the spaghetti and about 10 o'clock I went to the hospital. I remember going in and being put all up, you know, plugged up and everything, and then I started feeling nauseated. And so they brought me a cup, and there comes all the spaghetti up.

It was like, Granny, I'm still hungry now. And so many of my family members were there, cousins, aunts, uncles. It was so many people there for Mike's birth. And within 44 minutes, Mike was out. I got there at 10. He was born at 1044. Leslie knew she wanted to name her first born

after his father. She also knew that she wanted to honor her sister or brother, depending on the sex. And since it was a boy, her brother got the nod. I chose his middle name, which was Orlando. And then I wanted to give Mike a name of my own that I wanted to name him, you know, and that was Darion. And I wanted Mike to have his own identity.

I wanted him to be his own person, an individual. And his dad didn't want a junior. He didn't want that on there, so... So we came up with Michael Orlando's Darion Brown, and that's his name, M-O-D-B. Leslie called him Mike Mike. After his quick delivery, it felt like Leslie's whole family was at the hospital. She says it was really joyous. I just remember my mom and them coming in the room to see him and I was holding him and he had a little cone head and she brought his first outfit.

It says, I love my grandma. That was his first picture and life began for us. The first order of business for their new life, a visit to Granny's. When you have a baby, Granny does not come to the hospital. You have to stop at her house on your way home. So when I stopped at her house, some more of my family was there

to greet Mike and see Mike. And I remember my oldest aunt, her name is Barbara, she was holding Mike. She said, don't you be keeping my niece up all night because she got to go to school. So that was very important to me to go back to school and graduate. And that was Leslie's plan. I had to make these people proud of me, you know, because I had a little bump in the road, but we're going to keep going. And that's what I did. Leslie returned to high school her junior year a teen mom. As you can imagine, it wasn't easy.