Not far from where Michael Brown was fatally shot by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in 2014 is the headquarters of Emerson Electric, a Fortune 500 company doing $24 billion a year in business. It represents a paradox all too common to the St. Louis area, Harvard University historian Walter Johnson says, paying minimal taxes while its cash-starved hometown has disproportionately extracted millions of dollars in fines and fees from poorer, mostly minority residents. The resultant racial tensions exploded with Brown’s killing.

Johnson, a professor of African and African American Studies and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard, examines St. Louis’ history of racial capitalism and inequitable public policy in the latest Richard D. McKinzie Lecture.

Co-presented by UMKC’s Center for Midwestern Studies, Bernardin Haskell Lecture Fund, History Department, and High School/College Partnerships program.