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The federal government was expected to file a civil-rights lawsuit against the city of Ferguson on Wednesday, one day after the city council voted to revise an agreement aimed at improving the way police and courts treat poor people and minorities in the St. Louis suburb. The lawsuit was confirmed by a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because a formal announcement had not yet been made.

It was meant to be a joke, but to black students at the University of Missouri it was something they couldn't ignore. Four months after the shooting death of Michael Brown a local club gave out wristbands reading, "Hands Up, Pants Up" -- a mocking reference to the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" movement that represented a call for action in the wake of Brown's death.

The University of Missouri's president announced he would step down on Monday after protests by the school's football team and other students over what they saw as his soft handling of reports of racial abuse on campus. The high-profile resignation was the latest shock to the state of Missouri, and the United States at large, which has been roiled for the past year or so by racial tensions after police shot and killed an unarmed young black man in the state.

It was August 7, 2012, and I was standing in my hotel room in Kansas City about to shotgun a beer for the first time in my life. I had just made the biggest gamble of my political career—a $1.7 million gamble—and it had paid off. Running for reelection to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Missouri, I had successfully manipulated the Republican primary so that in the general election I would face the candidate I was most likely to beat. And this is how I had promised my daughters we would celebrate.

Police in St. Louis arrested more than 50 protesters who were demanding the dissolution of the police department in Ferguson, Missouri. Among those detained at rallies to commemorate a year since the death of Michael Brown were prominent members of the Black Lives Matter movement.

A year after Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., sparking weeks of often violent protests in the city, the country is still struggling to deal with the issues the shooting, and others like it, have brought to the fore. In an interview at the White House with President Obama, part of which is being broadcast today, NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep asked whether political considerations in his first term prevented the first black president from properly addressing the race issue.

The family of Michael Brown filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Ferguson on Thursday, seeking unspecified damages and police reforms after the black teen's killing by a white policeman prompted a national debate on law enforcement and race. The civil lawsuit filed in St. Louis County, Missouri, names the city of Ferguson, former Police Chief Thomas Jackson and former police officer Darren Wilson as defendants. The lawsuit seeks $75,000 in compensation, as well as unspecified punitive damages, and calls for a court order prohibiting the use of police techniques "that demean, disregard, or underserve its African-American population".

Residents in Ferguson, Missouri, cast their votes on Tuesday in a closely watched election seen as a critical step toward ending racially discriminatory practices that thrust the St. Louis suburb into the national spotlight last year. Eight candidates, including four African-Americans, are vying for three seats on the six-member City Council in Ferguson, where two-thirds of residents are black but the city's leadership has been long dominated by whites. Ferguson has about 21,000 residents. But it has had only two black council members since its incorporation in 1894, including Councilman Dwayne James, who is not up for re-election.