JEROME JENKINS was sitting in the library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989, pondering his future, when he picked up a book that described Ferguson, on the outskirts of St Louis, as one of the most diverse and integrated cities in the country. It sounded so good that he decided to move there from Gary, Indiana after graduating from college. “How ironic is that?” asks the black entrepreneur, throwing up his arms in mock horror.

Twenty-five years later, Mr Jenkins still lives in Ferguson. He seems to be thriving as the owner, with his wife Cathy, of a chemicals business and two restaurants, Cathy’s Kitchen and J & C BBQ and Blues. They are both on South Florissant Road, right next to the police department, in a city of 21,000 people that has just been through the most traumatic year in its history, in which it became an international symbol of racial strife and of bitterness between the police and blacks.

Weeks of rioting and civil unrest followed the shooting on August 9th last year of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. It was fuelled by what protesters perceived as the systematic harassment of young black men by the police. Darren Wilson, the officer involved, faced charges ranging from first-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter, but a grand jury in St Louis County decided not to indict him. This sparked the worst night of rioting, arson and destruction in the city’s history.

Miss-demeaning

In the months that followed, Ferguson seemed unable to settle down. In March an investigation by the Department of Justice (DoJ) concluded that it could not disprove Mr Wilson’s claim that he acted in self-defence when he killed Brown. In a separate investigation, published the same day, the DoJ also concluded that under instructions from the city the police in Ferguson engaged in something much like extortion to plug a hole in the city’s finances with traffic fines and court fees.

That triggered the resignation of the police chief, the city manager and the municipal judge, who had appeared to conspire to find ingenious ways to extract revenue from a population whose median household income is less than $37,000. Blacks, it was found, were twice as likely as whites to be searched, receive a ticket or get arrested by police during a traffic stop, which often resulted in a vicious spiral of unpaid fines, suspended drivers’ licences, more fines and, in many cases, time in jail.

“Ferguson’s court is running a debtors’ prison,” says Brendan Roediger at Saint Louis University School of Law, who is one of a group of civil-right lawyers suing the city. In 2013 the city collected $2.6m in court fines and fees, mainly for traffic violations, which amounted to 13% of its total revenue. Mr Roediger concedes that other cities in the county are even more prone to over-eager petty policing. There are 490,000 outstanding arrest warrants (often three or four for the same person) in St Louis County, compared with 40,000 in Cook County, which includes Chicago and is the second-most populous county in America. St Louis County has 81 part-time municipal courts; Mr Roediger says these should be replaced by a much smaller number of full-time courts, where judges are less likely to have conflicts of interest.

The DoJ report triggered some progress in the running of the city. At the start of the riots the mayor, city manager, police chief, five of six city-council members, six of seven school board members and 50 of 53 police officers were white. Today the new interim police chief, Andre Anderson, the new interim city manager, Ed Beasley, as well as Donald McCullin, the new municipal judge, are black. In the now 50-strong police force, five are black. And after municipal elections last April half of the members of the city council are black.

Yet changing the skin tone of the people running the city or the police is not sufficient to transform racial problems, as Baltimore (which had a black mayor and police chief when rioting broke out earlier this year) has found out. The most important change in the wake of the Ferguson riots (and the unrest that spread to other cities) is the way America as a whole looks at police shootings. Until then no institution even kept track of the number of people killed by the police. After Ferguson, every controversial incident—the killing by police in November of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old in Cleveland who was pointing a toy gun; the shooting death in April of Walter Scott as he was running away from a police officer in South Carolina; the death, also in April, of Freddie Gray in a police van in Baltimore; the suicide of Sandra Bland in a jail cell in Texas in July, after a traffic stop; and the fatal shooting in the same month, also after a traffic stop, of Samuel DuBose by a cop in Cincinnati—have received widespread national scrutiny.

Ferguson now requires police officers to wear body cameras, a practice that is gaining popularity across the country. A new Missouri law limits municipal-court revenue. And in May the federal government banned the transfer of some military equipment to local police departments.

Dominica Fuller, who in May became the first black woman in Ferguson to be promoted to police sergeant, finds these changes positive. “I love the body camera and feel more confident with it,” she says. The focus, she says, should now be on 18-to-24-year-olds, who need to understand that “we are here for you”—especially during the Ferguson Uprising Commemoration Weekend, which is nervously awaited by city officials. A silent march and a day of “civil disobedience” are among the planned events. Police across the county will be on high alert.

Business owners such as Mr Jenkins are nervous, too. Several businesses were burnt down and looted during the riots, and to this day a few have boarded up windows. But Ferguson has made a big effort to spruce up. Around 400 volunteers spent July 27th weeding, picking up rubbish and scrubbing off graffiti. Although several businesses have decamped since the riots, a few others have decided to invest in Ferguson, including Starbucks, which will set up shop on West Florissant Avenue. A new community centre, financed by QuikTrip, a chain of convenience stores, and other businesses will be built on the site of the QuikTrip shop that was burnt down during the riots. The anniversary weekend will be a test of something even more important: whether Ferguson’s residents think their city has changed.