Why Did Ferguson Explode?

By Carla Murphy Aug 14, 2014

Ferguson escalated last night and first thing across my screen this morning was a powerful, soul searching editorial from black weekly, The St. Louis American. Outsiders don’t know Ferguson or St. Louis like they do. They answer the million-dollar question: Why did Ferguson explode? "With deep humility we admit we did not see this coming," it begins. But from there it documents abandonment, disinvestment and persecution experienced by a generation of perhaps poorly educated but observant and intuitive young people. The St. Louis American is today’s essential reading on what’s happening in Ferguson. 

On schooling:

It may take a village to raise a child, but many administrators and parents in better-resourced parts of our region had no problem saying quite publicly that Michael Brown and his brothers and sisters [who wished to transfer from their unaccredited districts] did not belong in their village.

On police-community relations:

In many North County municipalities, it seems police run contests to see how many young black men you can pull over, flaunting the officers’ power and the motorists’ powerlessness….

But Michael Brown was not pulled over while driving. He was told to get out of the street while walking. For offering what was initially, according to an eyewitness, the mildest of resistance to a rude and unnecessary police order, this unarmed teen was shot in the middle of the day, and his bullet-riddled body left by police to lay in the street for hours, as if to provide a grisly example.

That did it. That’s what drove people (not just young people) to act out their pent-up rage. That’s what drove people to demonstrate (which is within their rights). 

Read the rest at The St. Louis American.