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It was about two weeks after Aug. 9, 2014, the day Michael Brown’s dead body was left in the street for hours after he had been shot by a police officer.

I was standing next to my wife in the second or third row. We were singing a popular Christian hymn I had sung dozens of times before. When the chorus rolled around the second time, I couldn’t get out the words. I couldn’t hold back the tears. Flooded with emotions that had been welling up for several days, I cried and shook, like I was at a funeral for a loved one who had unexpectedly passed.

I don’t know why I broke down at that song, at that moment. It might have been the exhaustion of writing of my life for two weeks. It might have been the overwhelming emotion of my visit a few days earlier to West Florissant Avenue and Canfield Drive in Ferguson to experience the protests up close.

Was I angry at God? Were my eyes opened to the historic racism that had been baked into the structure and daily life of St. Louis? Was I feeling helpless because all I could do was put words on paper, hoping they made a difference as a historic civil rights uprising unfolded?

I still don’t know why that moment unfolded the way it did. But it was the moment I knew I’d be writing about Ferguson for the rest of my life.

For the past decade, much of my work has been focused on telling the stories of those who have experienced the underbelly of institutional racism in St. Louis and the forces of good working to make this a more equitable community.

There was Keilee Fant, who became the poster child of the movement to end debtors’ prisons in St. Louis, where mostly poor Black residents in cash-strapped municipalities were fined repeatedly for driving and other infractions. ÁńÁ«ĘÓƵ were jailed when they couldn’t afford to pay for their freedom.

There were the Medicaid 23, Black pastors from across the state who were arrested and charged with trespassing when they dared to sing, pray and chant during a Missouri Senate debate. ÁńÁ«ĘÓƵ were highlighting the state’s failure to expand Medicaid and provide health care to more poor people.

There was Jason Wilson, the Clayton coffee shop owner who was stopped by police for “canvassing while Black” — he was knocking on doors on his way to becoming the first Black man elected to the Clayton School Board.

There were Luthor Hall and Milton Green, two Black police officers who felt abandoned by their colleagues in the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, with careers cut short. Hall was beaten up by white colleagues while working undercover during a protest; Green, while off duty, was shot by a white colleague and is still pursuing justice in federal court.

These stories were not tied directly to Brown’s death, but they had everything to do with the causes of one of the most sustained periods of protest in our nation’s history. What Ferguson did was rip off the Band-Aid covering a region’s original sin and reveal racism and division that could be ignored no more.

The words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in his “,” have guided me over these 10 years as I use my platform to tell stories of oppression.

“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate,” King wrote, lamenting that the “white moderate” is often more devoted to order than justice, thinking they can set a timetable for when and how protests should occur.

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will,” King wrote. “Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

There is no timetable for justice. But in the past 10 years, there has been tangible progress locally in terms of racial equity, from gained Black political power, to increased accountability in policing, to a stronger focus on investing in communities that have been left behind.

“I’m more hopeful than I was 10 years ago,” says Jason Purnell, president of the James S. McDonnell Foundation.

Months before Brown was killed, Purnell released the landmark “For the Sake of All” report, highlighting health disparities among Black and white residents in the St. Louis region. One of the values of the Ferguson protests, Purnell says now, is the massive gain in comprehension of racial disparities and how they’ve persisted for decades.

“We’re not going to go back,” Purnell says. “We’re not going to go back to, �I didn’t know.’”

On that day in church 10 years ago, I knew. I knew that Ferguson had changed the St. Louis area forever, as so many of us opened our eyes to the injustices around us. I could wipe away my tears, but I could not turn away.