Edward Crawford Jr. Tried to Protect Children in Ferguson. We Should Remember His Story.

Remembering Edward Crawford Jr., Darren Seals, and the Ferguson protesters whose lives and deaths deserve more than silence. There is a photograph

Remembering Edward Crawford Jr., Darren Seals, and the Ferguson protesters whose lives and deaths deserve more than silence.

There is a photograph from the Ferguson protests that many people remember, even if they do not remember the man’s name.

A young Black man wearing an American flag T-shirt stands in the street, holding a bag of chips in one hand while throwing a smoking tear gas canister with the other.

His name was Edward Crawford Jr.

The photograph became one of the defining images of the 2014 Ferguson uprising. People around the world saw it. Some saw defiance. Others saw confrontation with police.

But Edward told a different story about what he was doing.

He said he was trying to get the tear gas away from children.

I want us to remember that.

Because sometimes the world remembers an image, celebrates what it believes the image represents, and forgets to listen to the human being inside it.

1. Edward Crawford Said He Was Protecting Children

On August 13, 2014, police fired tear gas during protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson.

Photographer Robert Cohen of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch captured Crawford throwing a smoking canister.

The photograph became part of the newspaper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage.

But Crawford challenged the idea that he had thrown the canister to attack police.

In a 2014 interview with The Final Call, he explained that he had thrown it away from women, men, and children. As a father, he understood that a child could have been seriously injured.

That is a part of the story I wish more people knew.

Here was a man standing in the middle of a frightening situation, thinking about the safety of children nearby.

The photograph traveled around the world. His explanation deserved to travel with it.

2. Then Edward Crawford Died at 27

On May 4, 2017, Edward Crawford Jr. died from a gunshot wound while inside a vehicle in St. Louis. Two women were reportedly present.

Police concluded that his death was a suicide.

His father, Edward Crawford Sr., disagreed. He believed the shooting may have been accidental and said his son had recently been in good spirits.

Crawford’s attorney also publicly questioned the circumstances.

We should be careful here. A family’s disagreement with an official finding does not, by itself, establish that someone committed a homicide.

But we should not erase the family’s questions, either.

Edward was 27 years old. He was a father, a son, and a man whose life extended far beyond one photograph.

He had a future he was still building.

And the people who loved him had to continue living without him.

3. Darren Seals Was Another Voice Ferguson Lost

Darren Seals was among the outspoken activists who participated in the Ferguson uprising.

He challenged police conduct, criticized political leadership, and sometimes disagreed publicly with other activists. He did not believe that standing for justice required him to agree with everyone who claimed to represent the movement.

In September 2016, someone shot and killed Seals. Authorities found his body inside a burning vehicle in Riverview, Missouri.

He was 29.

Two years earlier, in November 2014, someone had killed 20-year-old DeAndre Joshua. Authorities also found Joshua inside a burned vehicle after he had been shot.

The similarities troubled people in Ferguson.

Investigators did not establish a connection between those two killings, but both remained unsolved in the reporting that followed.

Darren Seals deserved answers. So did DeAndre Joshua.

And both men deserved to be remembered for more than the circumstances in which someone took their lives.

4. The Deaths Became a Pattern People Could Not Ignore

By March 2019, the Associated Press was reporting on six deaths involving men connected to the Ferguson protests.

Among them were Edward Crawford Jr., Darren Seals, DeAndre Joshua, MarShawn McCarrel, Bassem Masri, and Danye Jones, whose mother was a Ferguson activist.

Their deaths did not all happen in the same way.

Authorities classified two as homicides, three as suicides, and one as an overdose. Families disputed some findings. Investigators said they had no evidence connecting the deaths to the protests.

Those distinctions are important.

So is the atmosphere in which people were trying to make sense of these losses.

Activists described receiving threats and experiencing intimidation. Families were grieving. People who had stood together in the streets were watching others from their community die young.

We do not have evidence establishing that someone systematically murdered Ferguson protesters.

But we do have evidence of violent deaths, unresolved homicides, disputed conclusions, threats, and a community carrying fear and grief.

That history deserves an accurate record.

We do not have to invent connections to recognize the losses.

5. We Remember the Photograph. Do We Remember the Man?

Something about Edward Crawford’s story stays with me. He became famous for a moment in which he said he was trying to protect people.

And yet, how many people who recognize that photograph know his name? How many know what he said happened? How many know that he died less than three years later?

We have to be careful about turning ordinary people into symbols and then forgetting that they still have ordinary human needs.

They have children. They have families. They have bills, hopes, disagreements, struggles, and plans for next week.

They may become famous without becoming wealthy. They may receive public praise without receiving much practical support.

And when the cameras leave, they still have lives to live.

Edward Crawford was not simply the man in the photograph.

Darren Seals was not simply the man found in a burning vehicle.

They were people who participated in something larger than themselves, but they were never less important than the movement.

6. Sometimes Preserving the Truth Is All Survivors Can Do

I have spent decades listening to Survivors and watching people struggle to make sense of events that changed their lives.

One thing I have learned is that not every story ends with justice.

Sometimes the person responsible never admits what happened. Sometimes an investigation leaves important questions unanswered. Sometimes people who fought hard for change die before they get to see what their efforts accomplished.

And sometimes the only thing left for those who remember is to tell the truth.

That can feel painfully small.

Especially when you remember the people who showed up, who tried to help, who stood in dangerous places, and who believed that speaking out could make something better.

But preserving the truth is not meaningless.

It means refusing to pretend that people never fought.

It means refusing to let their lives become nothing more than a headline, a photograph, or a disputed account of how they died.

It means remembering the effort, even when we cannot point to the ending we wanted.

Survivors understand this.

Sometimes we cannot make the institution tell the truth. We cannot make people care. We cannot recover the years or the people we lost.

But we can preserve an honest account of what happened.

And sometimes that is the work we are able to do.

7. People Did Fight. Let Us Never Forget That.

The Ferguson protesters were not all famous activists. They were neighbors, parents, young people, workers, students, and community members who saw something they believed was wrong.

They marched. They documented. They challenged. They questioned authority. They protected one another when they could.

They also disagreed, struggled, and made mistakes, as human beings do.

Their humanity should never depend on our ability to make them perfect.

Edward Crawford Jr. deserves to be remembered as a man who said he moved a dangerous canister away from children.

Darren Seals deserves to be remembered as a man who spoke his mind and refused to surrender his independent voice.

DeAndre Joshua deserves to be remembered as a young man whose killing left his family and community without answers.

And the others deserve histories that do not reduce them to speculation.

We can honor their lives without claiming to know what the evidence has not established.

We can ask questions without inventing answers.

We can remember without turning tragedy into entertainment.

There may never be a conclusion that satisfies everyone who lived through Ferguson. There may be questions that remain unanswered for generations.

But one thing should never disappear from the record.

People did fight.

They stood in the streets. They spoke when people wanted silence. They tried to protect one another. They challenged what they believed was wrong.

Some never got to grow old.

Some never got to see what came next.

And some left behind families who are still living with the loss.

I do not have an uplifting affirmation to place over all of that.

I have the truth, as much of it as we can establish.

I have their names.

I have the knowledge that they were here, that their lives mattered beyond their deaths, and that they did not simply accept everything happening around them.

Sometimes preserving the truth is all we can do.

It is enough to begin with. And it is far better than forgetting and pretending nobody fought.