Had it not been for the constant stream of news, tweets and YouTube videos after the August 2014 death of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old black man shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., Erika Pearson might never have become a student organizer at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

“It struck a nerve in me that I didn’t even know I had,” said Pearson, 23, a senior majoring in health sciences and the president of the university’s chapter of the NAACP. Read more.