It was early September and Vincent Flewellen had just wrapped up his day teaching at Ladue Middle School, in an affluent suburb about 13 miles south of where protests erupted in Ferguson.
Flewellen was in a good mood, but he knew he could be in for a difficult night.
Less than four weeks had passed since Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown, sparking countless protests.
Students in Missouri were enjoying the last few days of summer vacation when the protests broke out. For some teachers around St. Louis, the events in Ferguson presented a chance to teach about race in a new, more meaningful way.
According to a report by the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, the St. Louis region is the sixth most segregated metropolitan area in the country.
Flewellen, an African-American in his early 40s, was on his way to an event for teachers at Saint Louis University "to learn more about how to teach Ferguson. How to teach this whole ideal of racial understanding and racial healing," he says.
On his way to the event, Flewellen was waiting in traffic.
"A car pulls up next to me, driven by this middle-aged, older white man, who then takes his hand, his right hand, and reaches it across his passenger seat in the shape of a gun," he says.
Flewellen says the man then aimed his index finger at him and cocked his thumb like the hammer of a pistol.
[For more of this story, written by Tim Lloyd, go to http://www.npr.org/blogs/codes...with-lessons-on-race]
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