Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who will travel to Ferguson, Mo., on Wednesday, and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett personally briefed 1,000 African American leaders, community organizers and civil rights groups in private conference calls this week, White House aides said.

The strategy was aimed at enlisting the groups to “help keep the situation calm and focused,” said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the conversations…

Holder and Jarrett were joined on the calls by Molly Moran, acting director of the Justice Department’s civil rights division. They said that FBI agents had conducted more than 200 interviews and personnel from the federal civil rights division and the office of ­community-
oriented policing also are in Ferguson…

The civil rights groups said they would continue to press the Obama administration to implement broader reforms aimed at ending racial profiling among law enforcement officers and scaling back the militarization of local police forces.