Mr. Shelton said the report examined the city’s government under a previous administration, at a time when the Police Department was run by a different chief. And he noted that he and other elected officials had recently created a task force with the goal of encouraging peace and communication between the races and avoiding the kind of conflagration that engulfed cities like Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo.

James Hull, a pastor who hosts a local radio show, said it was “half-true” that “we’ve got our own Ferguson.” Like Ferguson, he said, there was a killing that he believed to be unjust. But unlike Ferguson, he said, the protest here would be peaceful.

Some, like Doyce Deas, 71, pray that will be true. Ms. Deas, a former City Council member, is one of a number of residents who have worked to help the city live up to the example set in the 1960s by black and white leaders who managed to guide Tupelo through school desegregation peacefully and without triggering so-called white flight. It is part of what locals call the “Tupelo Spirit,” local shorthand for a civic-minded, racially tolerant culture that many here, even black critics of the Police Department, believe has helped Tupelo attract industry and set it apart from other Mississippi towns.

Ms. Deas, who is white, spoke as though some fragile, precious edifice might crack. “I just don’t want to see our community torn apart,” she said.

Mr. Shumpert had been driving his friend Charles Foster’s car that Saturday night. The two men played together on the local semipro football team, the Lee County TiCats, and they were going to pick up a shirt that Mr. Foster wanted to wear to a team party.

Football was Mr. Shumpert’s passion. He was a fast, agile, broad-shouldered man who had little problem competing with players who were much younger than him.