When black teenager Michael Brown lay dead on a Ferguson street, shot by a white police officer, it happened in a town with a white mayor, white city manager, white police chief and a nearly all-white police force.
The details of what happened on August 9, 2014, and the days of protest that followed have become a polarizing topic in Ferguson and America as a whole. Arguments over the case often split down racial and sometimes-generational lines as to whether the facts of the case warranted the reaction that came after.
That reaction by a portion of the black community in Ferguson put all the blame on then-police Officer Darren Wilson, who they claimed shot Brown in cold blood for simply disobeying orders to stop walking in the middle of the street. People on the scene that day still say Brown was surrendering with his hands up when he was shot by Wilson.
But other citizens point to the details of the grand jury and subsequent Department of Justice investigation. Both ultimately determined Wilson was justified in the shooting and did not violate Brown's civil rights, saying the evidence showed Brown scuffled with Wilson in his vehicle and did not show Brown was surrendering when he was shot and killed.
Those details came long after months of protest that ultimately spawned a movement called Black Lives Matter. The details of Brown's death were often overshadowed by the pent-up frustration that boiled over in the black community about the way police treat and target them.
Protesters say the widely criticized reaction of the police who rolled military equipment into the streets and pointed guns at them during the initial protests after Brown's death only served to prove demonstrators' point: Police are overtly more brutal with black people.
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