LOS ANGELES—Angry chants of “No justice, no peace! No racist police!” and “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” clashed with police car horns Wednesday evening in downtown L.A., as hundreds of people gathered in front of the federal courthouse for the third day of protest against a grand jury’s decision not to indict a Ferguson, Mo., police officer for shooting dead an unarmed black teenager.

As smoke lingered over burned-out businesses in Ferguson, Mo., this morning, hundreds of St. Louis residents came out to help repair the destruction of the night before.

For 102 days, St. Louis has waited for answers. Did Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson shoot Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old, in self-defense, or was his motivation something more sinister?

“And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings” (Acts 17:26, NKJV).

When I briefly lived in California, I remember driving past people holding up pro-Proposition 8 signs. Prop 8 was a voter-approved constitutional amendment that affirmed marriage as a union between one man and one woman. (A federal court later ruled it unconstitutional.) I rolled down the window and gave them a thumbs-up.

This letter, initially written by Martin Luther King Jr. on scraps of paper and a newspaper’s margins, is probably the leading document of the 1950s/1960s civil rights movement, and a worthy start to our Saturday Series for Black History Month. In his response to a statement of criticism written by eight white Alabama clergymen, King stressed the importance of non-violent civil disobedience and the “moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

I’ve written about my opposition to government racial preferences for years. Some might say it’s an unlikely position for someone like me who is supposed to benefit from such preferential treatment. But I consider those preferences patronizingly demeaning and unfair, and I believe they undermine the laudable and necessary goal of racial neutrality in government.