By Nick Carey and James B. Kelleher FERGUSON Mo (Reuters) – The fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, on Saturday, and subsequent violent protests, highlight a stubborn racial divide in a St Louis suburb that has struggled to build healthy relations between blacks and whites. African Americans, allegedly excluded from buying homes in many St. Louis neighborhoods in an illegal practice called redlining, found Ferguson a hospitable place to set down roots. “Most of the communities around Ferguson have gone from all Caucasian to all African-American over a 40-year period,” said Terry Jones, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Ferguson, on St. Louis’ northern border, is relatively mixed, with 63 percent of the residents African American and 34 percent white, according to 2010 U.S. Census data. To some Ferguson residents, the shooting death of Michael Brown, 18, symbolizes how African Americans are treated unfairly in a town still run by a Caucasian minority.
Source: https://in.news.yahoo.com/shooting-black-teen-highlights-racial-divide-missouri-town-050144374.html