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More than 100 people gathered at Normandy High School, where Brown graduated, to march with Brown’s father to the former Canfield Green apartments where Brown died.

UPDATE: Two people were arrested at a protest at the Ferguson Police Department later Friday

At the Canfield site, marchers stood in silence for four and a half minutes — mirroring the hours that elapsed between the time Brown was shot and the time he was checked into the morgue, most of which he spent lying in the street.

And activists, from here and across the country, talked about the need to keep working, challenging leaders and insisting upon justice.

“We changed the world,â€� said Rasheen Aldridge, a Ferguson protester-turned-ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ alderman. “And we’re not done. We can’t stop.â€�

“We’re going to continue to hold them accountable,� said Cathy “Mama Cat� Daniels.

“We will be out here for forever,� said Ohun Ashe, another activist. “We will be out here until there’s no need for us to be.�

There was some debate about exactly how much has changed over the past decade. Some changes are undeniable.

Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of 18,500 people, is internationally known. The problems raised over weeks of protests following Brown’s death — killed by police, the way ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ suburbs used and the persistent inequality of Black and white communities — have been the subject of state and national legislative proposals and hundreds of news stories.

Many of the movement’s goals remain untouched. Police shootings have actually risen in recent years. Major federal police reform bills, like legislation increasing officers’ legal liability, have stalled in Congress.

However, the amount in fines and fees collected by ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County municipal courts dropped 71% from 2013 to 2023, according to a recent report from legal advocacy organization ArchCity Defenders. In Ferguson’s court, revenue dropped 95%.

Moreover, several people who protested in 2014 as ordinary citizens showed up Friday transformed. They have become city aldermen, nonprofit directors — even U.S. Rep. Cori Bush.

But when Bush spoke, she reined in some of the enthusiasm. She said that there has still not been justice for Brown’s family, the original rallying cry for the protests.

A ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County grand jury declined to indict former Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson in November 2014. The U.S. Department of Justice did the same in March 2015.

And in 2020, Wesley Bell, who Ferguson activists helped get elected as the first Black ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County prosecutor, also declined to charge Wilson, saying he didn’t have the evidence needed to prove murder or manslaughter.

“There has still not been justice for this family,� Bush said. “There has still not been change — not enough for Black people to feel it.�

And other speakers expressed disgust that Bell, the prosecutor, defeated Bush this week in a bitter reelection race that drew more than $10 million in outside money.

One even took to referring to Bell as “Wesley Sell� — for sellout.

Others pointed out that in the decade since Brown’s death, dozens of other Black people have been fatally shot by police. The names of many of them were printed on signs that lined Canfield Drive on Friday, including Sonya Massey, in Sangamon County, Illinois.

Cornel West, the national public intellectual and third-party presidential candidate, proclaimed, “We’re living in a sick empire indifferent to the vulnerable.�

But, he said, “we shatter that indifference.�

“We stand here with tears in our eyes,� he continued, “of both sorrow and joy, because the joy means that the love has not been crushed.�

Michael Brown Sr. closed out the speeches with a few words to his son.

“I love you,� he said, looking at the collection of stuffed bears laid out where his son once lay. “Your daddy got your back. I ain’t never going to stop in the streets. I ain’t never going to stop with the system.�