Photo: Discovery+/NowThis
Sherri Warren remembers her older brother, Keith Warren, as a quiet but confident introvert — the yin to her yang.
“He was on the left, I was on the right. Normally, what’s on my mind comes out of my mouth,” she told PEOPLE. “He, on the other hand, was quiet. You would have to really rile him up to get him mad.”
Sherri Warren and her brother, a 19-year-old Black man whose body was found hanging from a tree in the mostly white suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1986, are the focus ofUprooted, a new docuseries from Discovery+ and NowThis.
The three-part series, streaming now on the Discovery+ platform, revisits the tragedy and apparent mishandling of the case, which was erroneously ruled a suicide, according to the Warren family and those who witnessed the crime scene.
Police and county officials told the Warrens there was no autopsy and that evidence had been lost or destroyed.
For that reason, although police and prosecutors say the case has been re-investigated, changing the ruling is not possible unless new evidence is discovered. The Medical Examiner’s Office in Montgomery county has also declined to reopen the investigation.
Sherri Warren said what followed the death of her brother was more than three decades of her mother’s fight to rectify negligence and corruption at every turn, according to records, experts and witnesses that appear in the series. Kendrick Sampson, founder of BLD PWR, activist Linda Sarsour, Color of Change President Rashad Robinson, sociologist Nancy Wang-Yuen,Uprooteddirector Avril Z. Speaks and others also make appearances. (An exclusive clip from the series is shown below.)
Sherri Warren said her mother died trying to secure justice for her family, meticulously documenting every detail related to her son’s death. Now, Sherri Warren hopes the series will be the impetus to have her brother’s death certificate changed from suicide to homicide or undetermined.
In an interview with PEOPLE, Sherri Warren and Alicia Garza — co-founder of Black Lives Matter and host of a companion podcast to be released alongside the series — speak on the tragedy and the racial circumstances of the time that contributed to the outcome of Keith Warren’s case.
PEOPLE: What was Keith like in life? How do you remember him?
PEOPLE: Could you tell me a little bit about your family structure? What was your home life like?
Sherri Warren: At the time of his death, my mother and father were divorced, and my father was still in our lives. But (Keith, my mother and I) moved from North Carolina to Maryland. My mom got a job up there at Walter Reed, and she just packed us up and moved us up here. So at the time of his death, it was just me and him and her in Maryland. But we had a very strong family structure as well, both externally and internally.
PEOPLE: In Silver Springs, what was it like navigating daily life there as a Black person, particularly for boys and men?
Sherri Warren: Interestingly enough, Keith was a “Black white boy,” I don’t know how to explain it. All of his friends were white. All my friends were Black. His friends didn’t care for me, but not because of skin color, just because of my mouth. There were some racial tensions, and I can’t remember a lot. My therapist says I blocked out a lot. But talking to people there, you knew you were Black in Montgomery County, Maryland — there was not a question about it back in the 80s and 90s. So the landscape, I would say, I don’t think much as changed. After 30 years, you still know you’re Black, you know, and a culture is hard to change.
Black folks in particular, were demonized for suffering from this public health crisis. I think what’s also true is that in places like Montgomery County, Maryland, you saw not only a deepening criminalization of Black communities, but you also saw white supremacist forces inside of police departments. That’s something that we talked about right in this documentary. It’s something that we talked about on the podcast, that in many places where Black people settled and lived, the police forces that kind of monitored those communities often had covert and overt racism inside them.
That also makes it very complicated when we look at what happened with Sherri’s family. What happened to Keith, some of the challenges that they faced, honestly, had to do with not only racist public policy, but you also had racist actors who were responsible for enacting that public policy, particularly as it related to policing, to investigating crimes or not investigating crime, to determining what is considered a crime or not. And to determining whose life matters — I think that that’s a really big theme, in this case, in particular.
Sherri Warren: My mom, (the county and police) tried to silence her. They saw a single Black female with two kids, with no money and the county thought: We could just make her go away. It’s in their notes, it’s in police documents that I have. They tried to disparage her name, they said that she was a distraught mother who couldn’t get over her child’s death — or, you know, she was crazy, because she wanted to talk to anybody and everybody.
Then to pile on to that, there was a situation where in the 90s, there was a police dog that went missing in the county. This police dog, and you can Google it, they spent more resources and sweat equity trying to find this police dog, even bringing a psychic in.
I remember when we found out that the tree got cut down, and she demanded a meeting with the department. It took her probably a week and a half just to have a conversation about why (police are) collecting evidence month after the case is closed.
So all of that plays into the times and how Black people were treated, and if Keith was a white, blue-eyed, blonde-haired boy on a tree, I promise you there would probably have been more effort than with Keith’s case. They didn’t even cordon the area off. They didn’t interview people, nobody was talked to, you know, it’s unfortunate.
PEOPLE: Prior to your brother’s death, what was your perception of police? Did you feel like they were not there for you?
Sherri Warren: I mean, being Black growing up in America, especially in the 80s and 90s, you always had it in the back of your head that you’re not going to get the same level of equality when it comes to justice because you’re Black. That’s just something that you’re born with, but you’re raised to respect the police. My mom was always raised to trust them and believe that they would do right.
They do get paid off taxpayers dollars, so you think that they take an oath every day to protect and serve the community that they’re working in, right? So you would think that character integrity all plays into those who carry a badge or wear a uniform, that they would play a part in a position that they’re swearing an oath to every day. But not when it comes to Black people, as we’ve seen.
Back then, we didn’t have cameras, we didn’t have audio or video. It makes a huge difference. We still have situations in certain parts of America where the police do stuff that appears even in 2022. You’re seeing more of that, that hidden culture that you don’t speak about. Black people were speaking out against law enforcement and still are.
PEOPLE:Was there ever any indication that your brother was struggling with depression or considering suicide? Tell me a little bit about your initial experiences as a family with the police.
Sherri Warren: Keith loved life. Keith used to say to me that I was blessed to have a brother that looked as good as him. So no, I had spoken to him on that Monday prior to his body being found on Thursday. My uncle was getting married in North Carolina, and we were going to go down south because he was going to be a groomsman in our uncle’s wedding. There was no indication, my mom said that she was with him and she also saw no indications.
Up until Thursday, we thought the system was our friend, but then we found out it’s not. The system works against us, they started from day one. At the end of the day, no matter what you tell me, there was nothing in the afternoon of July 31, 1986, at 1:30 in the afternoon, that showed his death should have been assumed a suicide. There was nothing medical, scientifically factual. His body should have gone to a morgue or a coroner’s office, it should not have gone to the funeral home choice of the police department.
PEOPLE: Alicia, can you deconstruct the reality of “protect and serve” for Black Americans in this series?
Alicia Garza: In the series, I think what we try and highlight is that, for Black communities, “protect and serve” doesn’t really apply. The trials and tribulations that we see the Warren family go through just to get basic answers, especially at this stage. I mean, Sherri has talked a lot about how much of the evidence was destroyed or improperly cataloged, and so even at this point, to be asking for just a change on the death certificate that changes it from from suicide to unknown, is something that is being vigorously blocked.
There’s there’s so much in this case that shows that Black families seeking justice for disappeared or murdered loved ones — whether it be 30 years ago or today — are not being protected and not being served, even though we are contributing equally to the maintenance of police and policing. I think that that’s an important thing to highlight here.
Some of the ways that Sherri described how her family was treated, how her family was perceived, it is a part of this broader pattern of how there’s an assumption of the worst when it relates to Black families. It’s how her mother was treated as a single mother, she was treated as less than as less deserving of protection, less deserving of service. It’s important to pull those themes, all the way from 1986 to the present. We have to ask the question: How much has really changed for Black families in 30 years? And what’s getting in the way? I think that we can agree that what’s getting in the way is not Black families ourselves. It’s policies and procedures that at their core differentiate who matters and who doesn’t.
PEOPLE:Sherri, tell me a little bit more about the steps you had to take and the things you had to teach yourself in order to really get recognition for your brother’s death.
Sherri Warren: So first, let me give my mom all praise and accolades, because she’s the reason why I’m able to do this and sit in here and have this conversation. She was meticulous with writing things down, documenting everything: her thoughts, her energy, whatever was going on, she had a team that was able to put together manuscripts and books and stuff to tell her story. So I was able to tell her story using her words.
For myself, this is a learning process.I wake up every morning knowing that the Internet is free and I can utilize and get on there and just start talking about my brother, because I think the system wants to deflate you. My mom was the face of this until she passed. I was there to support her because we had different methods of how we wanted to work this case out. She wanted to play nice, she put on a pretty Black face, non-threatening, right energy, right conversation, right words — you know, not to piss people off.
When she passed away all gloves were off because at that point, I’ve lost everything. My mom, the day my brother died, she slowly started losing her life, because all she wanted was answers. All she was looking for was (for officials to) show us how he did it. Show us scientifically, medically, factually, how he did it. That’s all. I want the information in his death certificate and the police files to reflect what the evidence shows, and evidence shows this is not a suicide.
I’m happy to meet (the county) in the middle with undetermined. I have nothing to lose at this point in time, and I have a lot to gain. Thanks to (“Uprooted” executive producer) Matt McDonough and NowThis, I’m able to show you our journey. NowThis, along with Discovery, have done a beautiful job of showing my mom’s struggle and where we are today. It’s giving voice to my mom and our struggle with a justice system that doesn’t want to give us justice.
Uprootedis available to stream starting Feb. 18 on Discovery+.
source: people.com
