National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1967–1968)
Kerner Commission
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
President Lyndon Baines Johnson with some members of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission) in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Washington, D.C.
History
Status
Defunct
Established by
Lyndon B. Johnson on 28 July 1967
Related Executive Order number(s)
11365
Jurisdiction
Purpose
Investigate the causes of a recent outbreak of race riots, with a particular focus on the 1967 Detroit riots.
The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner Jr. of Illinois, was an 11-member Presidential Commission established in July 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson in Executive Order 11365 to investigate the causes of over 150 riots throughout the country in 1967 and to provide recommendations that would prevent them from reoccurring.[1]
The report was released in 1968 after seven months of investigation. Rather than attributing the rioting to a small group of outsiders or trouble-makers ("riffraff") as many prior riot investigations had done[2] or to radicals or a foreign conspiracy as almost three-fourths of white America believed,[3] the Commission concluded that the rioting was a response to decades of "pervasive discrimination and segregation." Said the Commission, "White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II . . . What white Americans have never fully understood--but what the Black 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."[4]
The Commission's 426-page report is regarded as "the touchstone for race relations"[5] and as "one of the two seminal works"[6] on race in this country. It was also a bestseller, outselling even the Warren Report which dealt with President Kennedy's assassination.[7]
^Johnson, Lyndon B. (July 29, 1967). Woolley, John T.; Peters, Gerhard (eds.). "Remarks Upon Signing Order Establishing the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders". The American Presidency Project. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California.
^See, for instance, the riot reports for the 1936 Harlem riot, the 1943 Detroit riot, and the 1965 Watts riot.
^Woods, Randall (2016). Prisoners of Hope. Basic Books. p. 321.
^National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968). Report of the National Advisory Commission on civil Disorders. Bantam Books.
^Michael Lipsky and David J. Olson (1977). Commission Politics: The Processing of Racial Crisis in America. Transaction Books. p. 137.
^Rick Loessberg and John Koskinen (September 2018). "Measuring the Distance: The Legacy of the Kerner Report". Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. 4 (6): 115.
^Julian E. Zelizer (2016). Introduction to the 2016 Edition, The Kerner Report. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. xxxiv.
The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the KernerCommission after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner Jr. of Illinois, was an 11-member...
Kerner may refer to: Kerner (grape), a variety of white grape Kerner (surname), name origin and list of people with the surname KernerKerner Commission...
the report and rejected the KernerCommission's recommendations. In April 1968, one month after the release of the Kerner report, rioting broke out in...
department's "value system". A survey conducted by President Johnson's KernerCommission found that prior to the riot, 45 percent of police working in black...
corporate turnaround specialist. He was also the Deputy Executive of the KernerCommission and Ambassador-at-large and U.S. Coordinator for Refugee Affairs in...
Peden to the President's Commission on the Status of Women established in 1961. Peden was the only woman on the KernerCommission that investigated the race...
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (2021). Cobb, Jelani & Matthew Guariglia (eds.). The essential KernerCommission report. New York: Liveright...
the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the "KernerCommission") from 1967 to 1968. While at the KernerCommission, he worked to secure funding...
prepare for urban conflict. Its actions ranged from commissioning a report by the civilian KernerCommission to mobilizing the army to prepare for martial law...
the thirtieth anniversary of the Kerner Report on March 1, 1998. The Kerner Report was released by the KernerCommission, a committee established by President...
Johnson to join the KernerCommission on July 27, 1967. After being asked, Mayor Lindsay accepted the offer and served as the commission's vice chairman. Another...
saying, "I hope they put him away and throw away the key." When the KernerCommission, appointed by President Johnson to investigate the causes of the unrest...
judges and military officers), and members of explicitly bipartisan commissions are not included. A third party member has never been appointed. ‡ Person...
Global Information
