Mother Jones

Last month, in the midst of nightly protests over the killing of unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, an 11-year-old boy named Marquis Govan approached the podium at a meeting of the St. Louis County Council, pulled the mic down to his height, and calmly delivered an incredibly well-informed, thoughtful, and stirring set of remarks.

“The people of Ferguson, I believe, don’t need tear gas thrown at them,” he said. “I believe they need jobs. I believe the people of Ferguson, they don’t need to be hit with batons. What they need is people to be investing in their businesses.” He wasn’t reading from notes, and the clearly stunned adults in the room gave him a round of applause when he finished.

If all this sounds surprising from a sixth-grader, Govan, a politics junkie who lives with his great-grandmother in St. Louis, drops more adult-sized portions of knowledge in this interview with CBS Sunday Morning. Don’t miss it.

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Stop Everything And Let This 11-Year-Old Boy Give You Hope For the Future