Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III was re-elected on Tuesday in his first election bid since a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black teen in his Missouri city that became a paradigm of racial profiling and police use of deadly force.
Knowles, who is white, won a third three-year term with 57 percent of the vote, defeating Councilwoman Ella Jones, according to preliminary election results posted on the county website.
Jones would have become the city’s first black mayor, two years after she along with Wesley Bell, who is black, were elected to the city council during the first election after the shooting.
Knowles was mayor of Ferguson, a mostly black community of 21,000 residents, on Aug. 9, 2014, when white police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black.
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