Ben Carson, a Republican who was the sole black candidate to speak here, took a tough-love approach that seemed to inspire little enthusiasm from the crowd. Mr. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, never mentioned the high-profile deaths of unarmed black men and women in police custody and held himself up as a model of how ambition and education could rescue poor African-Americans from poverty.
He called on black parents to talk to their sons about how they conduct themselves.
If you conduct yourselves in certain ways, he said, you are going to run into trouble, not only with law enforcement but with the guy down the block.
Herman Wallace, an attendee from Kansas City, Mo., was unmoved. Carson, he said, talked about himself.
