St Louis has become a region awash in signs. In the impoverished, majority black north, block after block of houses post signs with a stark message: “We must stop killing each other”.

In the region’s racially mixed, wealthier center, houses post signs with another message: “Black Lives Matter”.

Together, the signs tell the story of a region struggling to deal with questions of race and violence in the aftermath of the Ferguson events and a spate of homicides.

On the blighted city’s Page Boulevard sits Better Family Life, a nonprofit organization whose vice-president of community outreach, James Clark, spearheaded the “We must stop killing each other” campaign.

“One day I walk into the gas station, and a young man says: ‘With all this crime and violence going on, man, we got to stop killing each other,’” Clark recalls. “Next day, walk into the office, a young man is standing at the front table: ‘Mr Clark, man, my cousin got killed last week. We got to stop killing each other.’ Walk into my office after about an hour, a grandmother calls: ‘Mr Clark, my son didn’t come home last night. We don’t know where he is. We got to stop all this killing.’ For about three days, that message came to me.”

Children holding ‘we must stop killing each other’ signs. Photograph: James Clark

After years of a steady drop in crime, homicides surged in St Louis in 2014, up more than 30% from the year before. The trend continues in 2015, with incidents including two rolling gun battles on the highway, a toddler shot in a park, and a homicide near the baseball stadium in broad daylight. Most of the victims were black.

The violence has prompted more than 2,000 homes in the St Louis region to place “We must stop killing each other” signs on their lawns since April.

According to Clark, “we”, in St Louis, is everyone.

“What these signs have done is establish a narrative,” he says. “It is a narrative that is of course relevant to us in the African American community, but it is also a narrative that can go to police officers – you all must stop killing people. This is a message everyone can reflect on. I’ve got drug dealers and gang members and pastors, the whole spectrum of people, saying: ‘We are with you.’”

Clark says the demand for the signs is so high his organization cannot produce them fast enough. He sees the grassroots, door-to-door campaign as a public outpouring of frustration by those who have been “systematically shut out”. He says he saw the rise in violence coming since 2005, but no one believed him. I ask what makes people believe him now.

“The bodies keep dropping,” he answers. “What we have is a new mentality: ‘I will kill’. This is not like the 1990s, when crime was over drugs. Today it comes from disconnected individuals who have no hope, nothing they really value, because no one has valued them.”

Clark plans to plaster the St Louis region with signs, expanding beyond the black neighborhoods of St Louis into the whiter suburbs.

“Black Lives Matter is a good campaign,” he says. “It raises public awareness of the biased-ness that exists in America, the inherent racism that discounts black lives. But as an African American, I think that black lives have to matter first in the black community. We can promote that message on parallel tracks.”

‘We’ is everyone in St Louis

On the other side of town, across the famed “Delmar Divide” that separates white St Louis from black, two white retirees, Ben Senturia and Margaret Johnson, are discussing structural racism. They are among a group of 10 activists who have been trying to get white people to place “Black Lives Matter” signs on their lawns.

“There came a time when we were trying to figure out: ‘As white folks, how do we participate and be supportive?’” Senturia recalls. “One idea that came out is that we could try to promote the long-overdue conversation about race in the white community by creating yard signs that had a little bit of edge, and that would get people thinking and talking to each other.”

“Black Lives Matter” is a national movement, and Senturia is adamant that he and his partners are acting not as leaders but in a support role. The goal of the signs is to create conversation.

“One of the principal questions people ask is ‘Don’t all lives matter?’” Senturia says. “The answer is that all lives do matter in theory. But in practice, it’s not equal. There is structural racism and it’s important to emphasize that not just white lives matter, black lives matter as well.”

“Black Lives Matter” signs have been a source of controversy in St Louis. Since January, roughly 1,500 signs have been posted in the region, with coffee shops, churches and bookstores serving as distribution centers. Senturia hopes to ultimately post 5,000 signs, expanding into the wealthier suburbs, which have resisted the campaign. Many signs have been stolen or defaced, and both Senturia and Johnson tell of white people afraid to post them for fear of what their neighbors will think.

“The fact that people have difficulty putting up the sign – what does that tell you?” Senturia asks. “We’re certainly not post-racial if you can’t put up a sign in the neighborhood without feeling afraid.”

In an era of heated political conversation, St Louisans are staking their claims on the front yard. To drive through St Louis is to witness parallel communities coping with strife, struggling to find ways to articulate their anger and grief.

As much as Clark supports “Black Lives Matter”, Senturia and Johnson support the “We must stop killing each other” campaign.

“It’s terrific,” Senturia says. “The more the merrier. When it comes to these sign campaigns, it is an uphill battle.”