A commission born in a crisis
In the summer of 1967 American cities experienced a wave of disturbances. The worst were the Newark riot, which began on July 12, and the Detroit uprising, which started on July 23 and lasted several days. In Detroit the violence was severe enough that Johnson sent in federal paratroopers, alongside the state National Guard. Dozens of people died across the cities affected that summer, most of them Black residents, and property damage was extensive.
On the evening of July 27, 1967, Johnson went on television to announce that he was forming a commission. He signed an executive order creating the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which soon became known by the name of its chairman, Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois. The commission was to answer three questions: what had happened, why it had happened, and what could be done to prevent it from happening again.
Who sat on the commission
Eleven members were appointed. The vice chairman was Mayor John Lindsay of New York City, a Republican. Other members included a mix of politicians, officials and civic leaders: members of Congress from both parties, a labor leader, a business executive, a big-city police chief and two Black members, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. Observers noted that it was a moderate, establishment body. Few expected a radical report.
The commission employed a large staff, held hearings and sent teams into cities affected by the unrest, where researchers interviewed residents, police officers and officials. It also commissioned studies of the causes of disorder, such as unemployment, housing and relations with the police.
The February 1968 report
The report was delivered at the end of February 1968, dated February 29, and published for the public in early March. Its most quoted line stated: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” It rejected the notion that the riots were caused by outside agitators or a planned conspiracy. Instead it pointed to deeper conditions: discrimination, segregation, high unemployment, poor housing and unequal public services, together with a hostile relationship between police and Black neighborhoods in many cities.
Its most striking conclusion was about responsibility. The report said that “white racism” was a major factor in the creation of the conditions that produced the riots. It also criticised the news media for presenting the world from a white viewpoint, and it identified the actions of police and the failure of local government as common triggers or contributors. The commission found that the typical rioter in the surveys it reviewed was not a criminal or a recent immigrant from the South, but a young man who had grown up in the city, was somewhat better informed than his neighbors and was often underemployed.
What it recommended
The recommendations were large in scope. They included:
- Creating a very large number of jobs, public and private, in poor areas.
- Expanding and improving schools in segregated neighborhoods.
- A national system of income support, and a major housing program to build and make available several million units of low and moderate cost housing.
- Reforms to police practice and better complaint procedures.
- Programs to open up the suburbs to Black residents.
The commission did not put a precise cost on every proposal, but it called for a level of federal spending much greater than the existing War on Poverty, and for what it described as an enormous national effort. The report’s reasoning was that piecemeal action had proven insufficient.
The response
Johnson received the report coldly. He had hoped for findings that would support his own record, and instead the commission seemed to say that the Great Society had not done enough. He reportedly did not hold the usual ceremony of thanks for the members, and he did not endorse its main proposals, partly because the war was absorbing federal resources and Congress was resistant to new spending. Several accounts, including those of people involved, describe his irritation. The president’s other pressures at that time, including the Tet Offensive and the approaching New Hampshire primary, are part of the picture.
Public reaction was mixed. The report was published as a paperback and sold widely, and many commentators praised its candor. Others, especially critics of the president’s social programs, argued that it excused violence. Opinion surveys in the period showed that many white Americans did not agree that white racism was the primary cause of the unrest.
Aftermath and legacy
Within weeks, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, set off another wave of disturbances. Congress did pass the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which included fair housing provisions, in April, but most of the Kerner recommendations on jobs, income and housing were not enacted at the scale proposed. Fred Harris, a senator from Oklahoma who had served on the commission, later took part in follow-up studies assessing how much had changed.
Historians continue to debate the report’s influence. It is often cited as an early example of an official body naming structural racism as a cause of inequality, and it is revisited on anniversaries when researchers compare its findings with conditions in American cities. Its central warning, that the country was dividing in ways that could harden, remained part of the discussion about race and the cities long after 1968.