Can Ferguson, Mo., change the 'ritual' of black deaths?

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — The choir sang, the preachers shouted and the casket stayed closed. The body was taken to the cemetery, and Michael Brown was laid to rest.

Thus went the most recent enactment of "the ritual" — the script of death, outrage, spin and mourning that America follows when an unarmed black male is killed by police.

With a few variations, the ritual has followed its familiar course in the two weeks since the 18-year-old Brown was shot by white police officer Darren Wilson in this St. Louis suburb. It continues as we await the judgment of a grand jury considering whether Wilson should be charged with a crime.

Will the ritual ever change, and is it even possible that Ferguson could be part of that? This time, can recognition of the well-known patterns help heal the poisonous mistrust between police and many black people? Is the ritual already helping, in small gains buried beneath the predictable explosions of anger and media attention?

"This tragedy, because the world's attention has been galvanized, this is one of those things that's ripe for change," said Martin Luther King III after the funeral Monday. "There are no guarantees, but what we can say is we have to be committed to doing the work to bring about change and justice."

The ritual began to take shape in the 1960s, when instances of police mistreatment of black people led to organized resistance in many places across America — and sometimes to violence. As the decades passed, a blueprint developed for how black advocates confronted cases of alleged police brutality: protest marches, news conferences, demands for federal intervention, public pressure by sympathetic elected officials.