FERGUSON, Mo. — Racial tensions have run high for decades in this former railroad town that was once a mostly white St. Louis suburb until school busing and urban decay sent many families packing for more distant communities. Today, Ferguson is nearly 70 percent black, but the law here is still enforced by a police department that is more than 90 percent white. That fact has helped engender widespread distrust of officers — never more so than last weekend, when a white officer shot and killed an unarmed young black man who was about to start college. The suburb of 21,000 has been on edge since Michael Brown, 18, and another teenager were confronted by the officer Saturday near Brown’s...
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