It started with a body in the street.
For four and a half hours, Michael Brown’s body lay on the pavement in Ferguson, Missouri. That single event, and the agonizing delay that followed, didn't just spark a protest; it fundamentally rewired how we talk about race, policing, and the digital age in America. When I first picked up the They Can’t Kill Us All book, I expected a standard journalistic recap. You know the type. Dry. Distant. A bit too obsessed with being "objective" to actually tell the truth.
But Wesley Lowery didn't do that.
Lowery, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who was famously arrested in a McDonald's while covering the unrest, wrote something that feels less like a history book and more like a blister. It’s raw. He spent years traveling from Ferguson to Cleveland, Charleston to Baltimore, tracking the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. What he found wasn't just a series of isolated tragedies, but a systemic failure that the mainstream media—and most of us—completely missed until the hashtags started trending.
The Ferguson Effect and the Birth of a New Resistance
People often forget how chaotic 2014 actually felt.
Before the They Can’t Kill Us All book documented the timeline, Ferguson was just another suburb. Then, suddenly, it was a war zone. Lowery highlights a crucial shift: the transition from the "respectability politics" of the civil rights era to the decentralized, unapologetic activism of the 21st century.
In the old days, you had a central leader. A King or a Lewis. In Ferguson, the "leaders" were kids with iPhones and gas masks. They didn't wait for permission to speak. They didn't care if they were making the nightly news look "messy."
Lowery’s reporting captures the friction between these two worlds. He details the tension between the older generation of activists, who wanted to march in suits and ties, and the younger crowd who felt that those suits hadn't stopped the bullets. This wasn't just a fight against the police; it was a fight for the soul of Black activism itself. Honestly, it’s one of the most nuanced parts of the book because it refuses to pretend that the movement was a monolith. It was a messy, loud, and often fractured collective trying to survive.
Why the Data Was Missing (and Why That Matters)
Here is the thing that really gets me.
Before Lowery and his colleagues at The Washington Post started their "Fatal Force" database, the federal government didn't actually know how many people the police killed every year. Can you believe that? The FBI’s data was voluntary. If a police department didn't feel like reporting a shooting, they just... didn't.
Lowery explains that the They Can’t Kill Us All book grew out of this statistical vacuum.
We were having a national debate about police brutality without any actual numbers to back it up. Lowery writes about the grueling process of manual data entry—scouring local news clips and police reports to build a database from scratch. It turns out that when you actually look at the numbers, the disparities aren't just "unfortunate coincidences." They are mathematical certainties.
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Beyond the Hashtag: The Human Cost of Journalism
Reporting isn't just sitting behind a desk.
Lowery talks about the physical and emotional toll of being a Black journalist covering these stories. Imagine standing in a cloud of tear gas, trying to tweet through the sting, while knowing that the people being gassed look just like you. He doesn't shy away from his own arrest in Ferguson, which became a flashpoint for press freedom.
But he also pivots to the families.
The book spends a significant amount of time with the mothers. Samaria Rice. Lesley McSpadden. These aren't just names in a headline. Lowery depicts them in their kitchens, in their grief, dealing with the secondary trauma of having their children’s lives picked apart by pundits on cable news. It’s heavy stuff. It makes you realize that while the rest of us move on to the next trending topic, these families are stuck in a permanent "after."
The Cleveland Connection and Tamir Rice
One of the most haunting sections of the book involves Cleveland.
We all remember the video of Tamir Rice. Twelve years old. Playing with a toy gun in a park. Dead within seconds of the police arriving. Lowery digs into the history of the Cleveland Police Department, showing that the Rice shooting wasn't some freak accident. It was the result of a department that had been under federal scrutiny for years for a "pattern and practice" of excessive force.
Lowery’s strength is connecting these dots.
He shows that Ferguson wasn't an outlier. Neither was Cleveland. Or North Charleston, where Walter Scott was shot in the back while running away. By the time you get halfway through the They Can’t Kill Us All book, the sheer weight of the evidence is suffocating. It’s not a collection of "bad apples." It’s a poisoned orchard.
Digital Activism: The Twitter Revolution
Let’s talk about the internet for a second.
Lowery is very clear that without Twitter (now X, but it’ll always be Twitter in this context), Ferguson would have been a local story that disappeared in three days. The "citizen journalist" changed everything.
- Local residents started live-streaming before the big networks arrived.
- Hashtags allowed people in different cities to realize they were experiencing the same patterns.
- The speed of social media made it impossible for police departments to control the narrative for weeks at a time.
Lowery describes how the platform acted as a digital nervous system for the movement. It allowed activists like DeRay Mckesson and Johnetta Elzie to bypass traditional media gatekeepers. They could speak directly to the world. It was democratization in its rawest, most chaotic form.
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The Pushback and the "Blue Lives Matter" Counter-Movement
Of course, for every action, there’s a reaction.
Lowery doesn't ignore the rise of the "Blue Lives Matter" sentiment. He explores how the focus on police killings led to a defensive crouch among law enforcement. Officers felt unfairly targeted. They felt that the "Ferguson Effect"—the idea that police were pulling back from proactive policing for fear of being the next viral video—was leading to a spike in crime.
While Lowery is clearly writing from a specific perspective, he doesn't ignore these complexities. He talks to the cops. He talks to the union reps. He shows a country that is fundamentally talking past each other. One side sees a demand for basic humanity; the other sees an attack on the very concept of order.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Book
People think this is a "Black Lives Matter" manifesto.
It isn't.
It’s a book about the failure of American institutions. It’s about how the justice system, the media, and the political establishment all failed to see a crisis that had been simmering for decades. Lowery’s writing is sharp because he’s an insider-outsider. He’s a reporter for the most powerful paper in the country, but he’s also a young Black man who knows exactly what it feels like to be viewed with suspicion.
The They Can’t Kill Us All book isn't just about the dead; it's about the living who are left to scream into the void.
Why It Still Matters Today
You might think, "Well, that was 2014. We had the 2020 protests. Why read this now?"
Because the patterns haven't changed.
If you look at the headlines from last week, or last month, the names are different but the script is the same. Lowery provided the primer. He gave us the vocabulary to understand the structural issues. Without this book, our understanding of the modern civil rights movement is incomplete. It’s the difference between seeing a lightning strike and understanding the weather system that produced it.
Honestly, it’s a tough read. It should be.
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If you can read about the death of Philando Castile—shot in front of his partner and her daughter during a routine traffic stop—and not feel a pit in your stomach, you’re not paying attention. Lowery’s prose doesn't indulge in melodrama; the facts are dramatic enough on their own. He just lays them out, one after another, until the evidence is undeniable.
Actionable Takeaways for Readers
Reading a book like this can leave you feeling pretty hopeless. It's a lot. But understanding the landscape is the first step toward changing it.
Examine the Source
Next time you see a headline about a police shooting, look at the language. Is it "officer-involved shooting"? That’s a passive phrase that obscures who pulled the trigger. Lowery teaches us to be skeptical of official narratives until they are verified.
Support Local Journalism
National reporters like Lowery eventually go home. Local reporters are the ones who stay in the courtrooms for years. They are the ones who track whether or not the promised reforms actually happen.
Understand the Data
Check out resources like Mapping Police Violence or the Washington Post database. Don't rely on gut feelings or what you see on a 30-second TikTok. Look at the trends over time.
Engage with the "Why"
Don't just look at the protest; look at the conditions that led to it. As Dr. King said, a riot is the language of the unheard. Lowery’s book is an attempt to make us hear.
Moving Forward
The They Can’t Kill Us All book doesn't offer a happy ending.
There is no "mission accomplished" moment. Instead, it leaves us with a challenge. It asks us if we are willing to look at the uncomfortable parts of our society without flinching. Lowery did the legwork. He went into the tear gas so we could understand why people were out there in the first place.
If you want to understand why America feels so divided, or why the conversation about policing never seems to go away, this is where you start. It’s not just a book about "the news." It’s a book about us.
Next Steps for Deepening Your Understanding
- Audit your media intake: Follow independent journalists who specialize in criminal justice reporting rather than just relying on major network cycles.
- Review your local police department’s transparency reports: Many cities now have public dashboards for use-of-force incidents; find out if yours is one of them.
- Read the DOJ Ferguson Report: If the book sparked your interest in the "why," the Department of Justice's 2015 report on the Ferguson Police Department provides the clinical, evidentiary backbone to Lowery’s narrative.