Al Sharpton last seen booking a first class ticket to Missouri.

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — To some, a makeshift shrine in the middle of the Ferguson street where Michael Brown was killed last summer is a hallowed symbol of a new civil rights movement over race and policing. To others, it has served its purpose and is now more of an eyesore and a road hazard.

Within hours of Brown’s Aug. 9 shooting death by a white police officer, people began placing stuffed animals, candles and other tributes in the middle of Canfield Drive, where the unarmed black 18-year-old’s body lay for about four hours before it was removed.

The shrine stretches several yards down the center of the two-lane road that bisects a housing complex, and city leaders are grappling with the thorny question of whether to remove or replace it and risk further inflaming racial tensions in the 21,000-resident St. Louis suburb, which is two-thirds black.

“It’s a very sensitive topic,” says Janie Jones, a black, Washington-based mediator who says she has been working behind the scenes with Ferguson municipal leaders and the Brown family on how to clear out the memorial without agitating the black community.

“It represents a community’s cry for justice – not just for Michael Brown, but for people all over the world,” Jones told The Associated Press on Monday. “The city has some serious decisions to make going forward.” […]

Jones said Brown’s mother wants a portion of the road where the memorial rests carved out and repaved because “she feels like her son’s blood is still in the streets.”