The Ferguson Decade

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covers a decade in the life of a divided American city reckoning with the challenge of enacting change after tumultuous civil rights protests.

On August 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot to death by a police officer, kicking off a firestorm of protests across the nation and within the wide community of St. Louis, making the city the epicenter of America's fraught debate on racial inequality, policing, and city governance. Writing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tony Messenger was on the ground speaking to local citizens to gain a better understanding of the feelings and anger that had long simmered in the community. But then America's attention moved on, and what was left was a city trying to right past wrongs and move forward. The Ferguson Decade follows the story over the next ten years, as St. Louis struggled to build coalitions, pass laws, and enact real change. Messenger interviews activists, lawmakers, cops, school board members, and average citizens who are caught up in the difficult and slow nature of bureaucratic and social change. When Donald Trump's election kicks off a "war on woke," a backlash formed against any focus on racial inequity, policing, and DEI initiatives. As one resident comments to Messenger on the past ten years in the city, "Everything has changed, and nothing has changed."

With compassionate and rigorous reporting, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Messenger examines an American city navigating its way through past wrongs and current woes, trying to find a more just path forward.