Shock… Fear… Bewilderment
Those are some of the words used in a special commission report to describe protests and disorders that hit American cities. The report goes on to say that the protests were created in part by “the abrasive relationship between police and minority communities… resulting in a major — and explosive — source of grievance, tension and disorder.” Underlying all that was one key fact, according to the report. And it was this:
“Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate but unequal.”
Now, here comes the ‘kicker.’ This is not from a report following the recent #BlackLivesMatter protests. No, it’s from a report produced more than half a century ago in 1968. It’s commonly referred to as The Kerner Report named for the chairman of the commission that produced the report.
The official name was The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. It was created by President Lyndon B. Johnson in late 1967 after a series of ‘race riots’ in more than 100 cities around the country. He appointed the Governor of Illinois, Otto Kerner, as chairman. There were 11 other members appointed, including New York Mayor John Lindsay, Atlanta Police Chief Herbert Turner Jenkins, as well as Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, the first African-American popularly elected to the Senate and Roy Wilkins, Executive Director of the NAACP.
In creating the commission, President Johnson said that while the resulting violence could not be tolerated: “The only genuine long-term solution is an attack on the conditions that breed despair and bread violence — ignorance, discrimination, slums, poverty, disease, not enough jobs.”
“We must attack these conditions,
not because we are frightened by consequences
but because we are fired by conscience.”
He charged the commission with answering three basic questions:
What happened?
Why did it happen?
What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again.
President Johnson didn’t like the answers he got.
Despite his rhetoric in appointing the commission and despite the fact that the commission findings echoed his words, President Johnson believed the report was more critical of his administration’s response to the situation and did not give him enough credit for what he had done.
The commission recommendations embraced three basic principles:
To mount programs on a scale equal to the dimension of the problems
To aim these programs for high impact in the immediate future in order to close the gap between promise and performance
To undertake new initiatives and experiments that can change the system of failure and frustration that now dominates the ghetto and weakens our society
“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 contained some very blunt warnings that seem almost prophetic in light of today’s Black Lives Matter movement.
“Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American.
“This deepening racial division is not inevitable. The movement apart can be reversed. Choice is still possible.
“To pursue our present course will involve the continuing polarization of the American community and, ultimately, the destruction of basic democratic values.”
The Kerner Commission issued its report on February 28, 1968.
On March 4, 1968, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. described the report this way:
“A physician’s warning of approaching death with a prescription for life.”
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was killed.
Now, more than fifty years later America still has not taken its medicine. Now it’s going through another outbreak of the disease called racism.
