FIVE DAYS

How one man’s death from police brutality exposed a city’s pain and anger.

On April 12, 2015, 25-year-old Freddie Gray was chased and searched by Baltimore policemen. When they found he had a pocketknife, they arrested him, placing him in leg irons in the back of a police van. By the time the van arrived at the station, Gray was unconscious; at the University of Maryland Medical Center, he underwent surgery for three broken vertebrae and an injured voice box. After a week in a coma, he died. Political analyst and activist Moore, head of the anti-poverty Robin Hood Foundation and a Baltimore native, closely examines the unrest that followed Gray’s death by recounting the experiences of a series of people deeply affected by the events. The result is a visceral collective portrait of a community beset by poverty and injustice. “What really happened over those five days?” Moore asks. “And what do we do next?” Among the voices that the author includes are those of a black policeman hoping “to heal the disconnect between police and the West Baltimore community he grew up in”; a woman whose brother was a victim of police brutality, desperately trying to hold the perpetrators accountable; a white public defender who has devoted her career to working with juveniles; a prominent lawyer who turned to representing plaintiffs in police brutality cases; the owner of the Orioles, stunned by the protestors’ violence, who came to see that his team needed to foster a relationship with the community; a well-regarded civic leader who organized a peaceful protest march that included Congressman Elijah Cummings and local ministers; and the manager of a beloved recreation venue that was protected from the uprisings by a group who made sure that everyone knew the business was black-owned. By focusing on a cross-section of individuals, Moore underscores his point that “our fates are profoundly intertwined.” Gray’s death, a result of the complex consequences of poverty, impels all Americans to “wrestle with the history of complicity and bias.”

Moving testimony to a nation’s deep wounds.