Hillary Clinton is planning to visit the Ferguson, Missouri, area on Tuesday and deliver remarks in the shadow of a city scarred by the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a white police officer.



The Democratic presidential contender is due to make a campaign stop in Florissant, a suburb of St Louis that neighbors Ferguson, where the death of Michael Brown last August led to months of protests and reopened a national debate on race and criminal justice.



She will speak and appear with community leaders at Christ the King church, which is led by black clergy, according to a draft schedule seen by the Guardian. The Rev Traci Blackmon, the church’s pastor, is a member of the Ferguson commission, a taskforce established by the Missouri governor, Jay Nixon, to tackle the unrest prompted by Brown’s death.



Clinton has been forthright in discussing disparities in the US, saying last week the country must discuss its “long struggle with race”. Her remarks on Tuesday are expected to focus on youth employment.



Florissant shares a school district with Ferguson and has come under similar criticism for its criminal justice system, which is accused of disproportionately penalizing poor and African American communities over minor offences.



Details of the event were provided to the Guardian by Pastor Karen Anderson of Florissant’s Ward Chapel AME church, who is scheduled to co-host Clinton with Rev Blackmon.

Anderson, a prominent figure in efforts by regional clergy to embrace young civil rights activists, said the event’s proximity to Ferguson was intentional and that several protesters were being invited back to Christ the King, where several early meetings were held following Brown’s death.

“We want to discuss issues with Secretary Clinton that are primary to our community,” said Anderson. “We want to talk about economic disparity, the school-to-prison pipeline, issues with court reform and law enforcement reform.”

Anderson said one activist due to be invited was Rasheen Aldridge, the youngest member of the Ferguson commission, who was part of a delegation of young black activists to meet Obama in the Oval Office last year.

“We have a huge problem about race in this country and we haven’t tackled the root – we’re continuing to knock on branches,” Aldridge said on Monday. “We want Secretary Clinton to look at the problems causing oppression and discrimination and tell the truth about them.”

Clinton’s campaign is attempting to recreate a coalition of young, female and minority voters that twice carried Barack Obama to victory. While some activists are skeptical of her attention to black voters, others have described it as encouraging.

The former secretary of state used her first major campaign address to call for a radical overhaul of the US criminal justice system. In the April speech Clinton was blunt about the issues: “We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.”



“From Ferguson to Staten Island to Baltimore, the patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable,” Clinton said. A grand jury declined to bring charges against the Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson over Brown’s shooting.



Speaking last week in response to the killing of nine black people at a church in South Carolina, Clinton said the country could not shy from confronting “hard truths about race and justice” despite their connection to “a history we wanted so desperately to leave behind”.



“We have to name them, own them, and ultimately change them,” she said.



Sabaah Jordan, an organizer with Black Lives Matter, said activists were now looking for Clinton to do more than pay lip service to high-priority issues for black Americans.



“This is a difficult time for many of us,” Jordan said in an email to the Guardian. “All I can say is that any responsible candidate must address the fact that black Americans are under attack, from police and vigilantes as well as policymakers who continue to exploit our vulnerability for profit and neglect our social and economic needs.”



In a June speech at Texas Southern University, a historically black college, Clinton called for an extension of voter rights and challenged Republican-sponsored voter ID laws, which have served to disenfranchise black and Hispanic voters. During the speech, she called for an automatic voter registration system and accused some of her Republican opponents of being “scared of letting citizens have their say”.



Clinton invited DeRay McKesson, a civil rights activists and outspoken participant in the Black Lives Matter movement, to her official campaign launch rally on Roosevelt Island in New York in June.



In that speech, Clinton unveiled a decidedly progressive agenda, pledging to roll out policies on paid sick and family leave, equal pay, improving infrastructure, college affordability, raising the minimum wage, reforming Wall Street and fighting climate change. For McKesson, the speech contained one glaring omission.



“I heard a lot of things. And nothing directly about black folk. Coded language won’t cut it,” he tweeted after her speech.

