ST. LOUIS, MO, AUGUST 26 (RIA Novosti) – The police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, was a “straw that broke the camel’s back” and unleashed pent-up racial anger, campaigner Khalid Jabari told RIA Novosti after the funeral service for the victim.
“The anger that was displayed by the people of Ferguson says to me that blacks have been disenfranchised here for a long time. The shooting of Michael brown was just the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Jabari told RIA Novosti on Monday.
“This situation gave people room to vent and explode – and they have earned their right to access political power,” the campaigner added.
Thousands of mourners attended the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church on Monday for a funeral service for Michael Brown shot dead by police officer Darren Wilson as he walked with a friend on the afternoon of August 9.
Following the killing, Ferguson, a downtrodden suburb of St Louis of some 21,000 residents, has been riven by often-violent protests since Michael Brown was shot, killed and left uncovered, bleeding on the tarmac in view of increasingly-upset friends and relatives.
The grand jury is hearing evidence about Brown’s shooting and is expected to decide whether to charge lawman Darren Wilson by mid-October. The inquiry hinges on whether Wilson, 28, fired in self-defense.
