Mrs. Clinton spoke out against the Confederate flag in 2007 when she told The Associated Press while campaigning in South Carolina that she “would like to see it removed” from the State House grounds. But until Tuesday, she had not commented on the current debate.

In her discussion Tuesday with community leaders at Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Mo., Mrs. Clinton said the flag’s removal would be “just the beginning of what we have to do” to combat racism.

She proceeded to list statistics about the economic disparities between black and white Americans, saying schools are more segregated today than they were in the 1960s, with 23 percent of black students in the South attending majority white schools in 2011, slightly lower than the percentage in 1968, according to her campaign.

It was no accident that Mrs. Clinton chose a town near Ferguson to hold the campaign event, one of only a handful of public appearances on her schedule in the coming weeks. The early months of her presidential campaign have been marked by sweeping speeches about race relations and issues like criminal justice reform and voting rights that may particularly resonate with African-American voters.