Kerner Commission Report
The Kerner Commission Report, officially known as the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, was established in 1967 in response to widespread urban riots and unrest across the United States. Appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the commission aimed to investigate the underlying causes of these disturbances, which were predominantly seen in cities with significant African American populations. The report, released in February 1968, identified white racism as the fundamental cause of the riots, attributing the unrest to a combination of systemic discrimination, segregation, and socio-economic disparities faced by African Americans. It emphasized that these issues were deeply rooted in the structure of American society and highlighted the urgent need for comprehensive policy changes to prevent a divided society.
The commission proposed three potential approaches to address these challenges: maintaining the status quo, improving conditions in segregated communities without integration, or pursuing a national commitment to integration and improvement of ghetto conditions. The latter was deemed the most viable for fostering a unified society. The recommendations included addressing barriers to jobs and education, enhancing law enforcement practices, and promoting communication across racial lines. Despite some progress in civil rights legislation following the report, significant racial inequalities and societal divisions remained evident in subsequent decades, underscoring the complexity of these persistent issues.
Kerner Commission Report
Date: Published February 29, 1968
Author National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
A formal, governmental attempt to explain the greatest explosion of urban racial violence in the nation’s history. The report, the product of a commission appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, blamed pervasive racist attitudes and practices for the riots in the nation’s cities.
The Work
Beginning in 1963, the United States experienced an unprecedented number of urban racial disorders. In 1967 alone, more than one hundred U.S. cities exploded in episodes of violence and looting. In November, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission (formally known as the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders), headed by Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois, to conduct an investigation to determine exactly what had happened and why and make recommendations to solve the problem.
Because of a sense of urgency in addressing the issue before the coming of summer, the season in which most of the urban disorders took place, the commission issued its report on February 29, 1968, three months before its deadline. Although the commission members were political moderates and such commissions were often viewed as a means of postponing decision or avoiding action, the finished Kerner Commission Report was controversial and an unexpected blockbuster.
The commission reported that the basic cause of the urban disorders was white racism and that white, moderate, responsible America was where the responsibility for the riots ultimately lay. It had conducted detailed case studies of cities where violence had erupted and found that the riots had not been caused by any single factor or precipitating incident and were not the result of an organized plan or conspiracy. Its report stated that “the single overriding cause of rioting in the cities was not any one thing commonly adduced unemployment, lack of education, poverty, exploitation but that it was all of those things and more, expressed in the insidious and pervasive white sense of the inferiority of black men.” The commission emphasized that the source of the problems was the very structure of American society; it did not seek explanations in the psychology of individuals. The report pointed out, “What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” The report concluded, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white separate and unequal.”
According to the commission, although racism was behind the riots, the more proximate causes of the unrest were pervasive discrimination and segregation in employment, education, and housing and the concentration of impoverished blacks in the inner city, produced by black migration into and white exodus from urban areas. Other contributing factors included the frustration of African Americans with civil rights legislation that failed to deliver the greater opportunity it promised; dissatisfaction with police practices that, for many African Americans, symbolized the oppression associated with racism; and society’s apparent tendency to approve of violence against civil rights activists. The commission also noted enhanced racial pride, especially among young African Americans, and a feeling of powerlessness that led some to conclude that violence was the only effective means of change.
The Kerner Commission concluded that discrimination and segregation were serious problems that presented a threat to the future of the nation and must be eliminated. It indicated that three options were open to the nation: to maintain existing, admittedly inadequate policies regarding integration and the elimination of poverty; to focus on improving life in African American ghettos and ignore the goal of integration; or to pursue integration by improving conditions in the ghetto and implementing policies that would encourage movement out of the inner city.
The commission stated that the first option, to maintain existing policies, would permanently divide the United States into two separate and unequal societies and create an irreversible, polarized, police state rather than a democracy. The second option, described as “gilding the ghetto,” would enrich the inner city but would further promote a separate, segregated society. Option three, a national commitment to change that involved moving a substantial number of African Americans out of the ghettos, was viewed as the most viable. This option was designed to create a single society in which all citizens would be free to live and work according to their capabilities and desires, not their color.
The Kerner Commission made a series of recommendations related to jobs, housing, education, law enforcement agencies, and nearly every aspect of American life. It asked Americans to tax themselves to the extent necessary to meet the vital needs of the nation. Specific goals included the elimination of barriers to job choice, education, and housing and an increase in the responsiveness of public institutions to relieve feelings of powerlessness. Other goals were to increase communication across racial lines to destroy stereotypes; to halt polarization, distrust, and hostility; and to create common ground for efforts toward public order and social justice.
Impact
Shortly after the Kerner Commission Report was released, some of its dire prophecies were confirmed when massive urban disorders erupted throughout the country after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in April. This spasm of violence and destruction punctuated the urgent need to address racial problems.
Since the publication of the report, the passage and enforcement of major civil rights legislation erased de jure discrimination; however, major societal divisions and racial inequalities persisted into the 1990’s, partly because of de facto discrimination, which is much harder to regulate away.
Additional Information
Paul A. Gilje’s Rioting in America (1966) provides a historical survey of the nation’s urban disorders; those in the 1960’s are set in the context of a national phenomenon.