In the days that followed, Larman Williams, then 34, could not get the real estate agent listed on the sign to return his inquiries. The couple was trying to buy a home in a nearly all-white town. Despite laws forbidding the practice, Ferguson, along with most of north St. Louis County, had neighborhoods with restrictive real estate policies — sometimes written, sometimes just whispered — forbidding the sale of homes to blacks. In this suburban tableau of white post-war prosperity, there was no deference to the fact that Williams had a college degree and was working on a graduate degree in education. Or that he was named Larman in honor of a white German manager who had given his father a job at the Universal Match Corporation plant during the Depression. Williams was up against decades of segregated housing and zoning policies and real estate and lending practices in St.