In 2015, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for its coverage of the protests following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson the previous year. One of the images, taken by photographer Robert Cohen, shows Jonathan Pulphus pouring milk on the face of the female protester who had been tear gassed.
Pulphus, an equity advocate and organizer, was a sophomore at Saint Louis University when Brown, an unarmed, 18-year-old Black man, was killed by white police officer Darren Wilson, who claimed he had acted in self-defense. A grand jury decided not to indict Wilson, which sparked protests and outrage over charges of racism and police brutality. Pulphus, who graduated with a degree in African American Studies in 2017, writes about the nine months he spent as a student activist on the frontlines in the aftermath in his new book, With My People: Life, Justice, and Activism Beyond the University, out today from Broadleaf Books. Pulphus will discuss the new book with Lola Zasaretti, Dr. Stefan M. Bradley, Alisha Sonnier, T.R. White AKA Swagged Out Shawty, and Etefia Umana on September 20 at the First Congregational Church of St. Louis.
“As we were trying to seek justice for Mike Brown, I was concerned that the news reports misrepresented us and mishandled us,” says Pulphus, who now works as a grants director for a local non-profit. “If you weren’t here in 2014 and you got your news from Fox News, you’d think the only things left in Ferguson were burned-down buildings and liquor stores, that people out here were acting like animals, were unruly and there was no organization. What motivated me to write the book was to give a first-person lens into what was actually happening to help dispel a lot of those narratives.”…