US activists start seven-day march for Michael Brown

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US civil rights activists embarked on Saturday (Nov 29) on a seven-day march to demand sweeping police reforms and denounce a grand jury's decision not to indict a white officer who shot dead an unarmed black teenager.

The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) organised the 120-mile (192-kilometre) "Journey for Justice," heading from the St Louis suburb of Ferguson, where Michael Brown was killed, to Missouri state capital Jefferson City.

A core group of around 100 marchers, many from other states, hope to attract thousands in their demands for the sacking of the Ferguson police chief, nationwide police reforms and an end to racial profiling.

"We will fight until hell freezes over, and then we will fight on the ice," NAACP president Cornell William Brooks told supporters at Washington Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church before setting out.

It is the latest in a series of protests that erupted across the United States after a grand jury on Monday decided not to indict white police officer Darren Wilson for killing Brown in Ferguson on Aug 9.

The decision revived long-standing questions about how police, especially white officers, interact with African Americans.

The peaceful march came after 15 protesters were arrested late on Friday outside the Ferguson police department and after demonstrators shut down a shopping mall in St Louis, demanding a boycott of post-Thanksgiving shopping.