Elections triple black presence on Ferguson council

The number of African-Americans on Ferguson's city council has tripled after the first municipal elections since a white police officer shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
Thirty per cent of registered voters in the St. Louis suburb of 21,000 -- which is two-thirds African-American -- cast ballots in yesterday's election, more than double the typical turnout, St. Louis County election officials said.
Of the three seats up for grabs, two were won by black candidates -- Ella Jones, chair of Ferguson's human rights commission, and Wesley Bell, a criminal justice professor and municipal judge in another St. Louis suburb.

They will join Dwayne James who, prior to Tuesday, had been the lone African-American on the otherwise all-white, six-seat council, which is presided by Mayor James Knowles, who is also white.
The third winner today was Brian Fletcher, a former mayor who launched an "I Love Ferguson" campaign amid the intense media attention cast on the city following Brown's death.
Ferguson has been in the global spotlight since police officer Darren Wilson killed Brown, an 18-year-old, on a residential street last August, triggering weeks of protests that at times spilled into rioting.

A US Justice Department inquiry, released in March, said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Wilson for the youth's death, which allegedly occurred after Brown tried to grab hold of the officer's handgun.

But it exposed a history of racial bias within the Ferguson police force, which targeted blacks as a way to generate municipal revenue through traffic fines and court fees.
Ferguson's police chief, municipal judge and city manager have since resigned, while Mayor James Knowles -- whose job was not in contention yesterday -- is the target of a recall campaign.