Dr. Walter Johnson is the Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies. He teaches MPES engaged scholarship courses including “History 13C: St. Louis from Lewis and Clark to Michael Brown.” He is a founding member of the Commonwealth Project, which brings together academics, artists, and activists in an effort to imagine, foster, and support social change in St. Louis.
“I am super passionate about St. Louis and about justice. I am disgusted by a lot of the injustice and meanness in our society. I’m inspired by all kinds of actions and programs that try to imagine better ways of living in relationship to one another,” says Johnson. “I guess what I try to do, as a professor, is model that for my students. I try to ask them to relate to one another in order to build a tiny fragment of a better future, just in their relationships to one another.”