Civil rights activists have embarked on a seven-day march to demand sweeping police reforms and denounce a US grand jury's decision not to indict a white officer who shot dead an unarmed black teenager.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is organising the 192-kilometre "Journey for Justice" from the St Louis suburb of Ferguson where Michael Brown was killed to Jefferson City, the Missouri state capital.
A core group of around 100 marchers, who hope to be joined by thousands more by the end, are demanding the sacking of the Ferguson police chief, nationwide police reforms and an end to racial profiling.
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"We will fight until hell freezes over and then we will fight on the ice," NAACP president Cornell William Brooks told an impassioned prayer service at Washington Metropolitan A M E Zion Church in St Louis.
"What we're endeavouring to do here is seek justice for a grieving family as well as systemic, fundamental reform in terms of policing for an outraged community," Brooks told reporters on Saturday.
