Kerner Commission - Findings of The Report

Findings of The Report

Appointed by Johnson to serve as the commission's executive director, David Ginsburg played a pivotal role in writing the commission's findings. The Commission's final report, the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders or Kerner Report was released on February 29, 1968 after seven months of investigation. The report became an instant best-seller, and over two million Americans bought copies of the 426-page document. Its finding was that the riots resulted from black frustration at lack of economic opportunity. Martin Luther King Jr., pronounced the report a "physician's warning of approaching death, with a prescription for life."

The report berated federal and state governments for failed housing, education and social-service policies. The report also aimed some of its sharpest criticism at the mainstream media. "The press has too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men's eyes and white perspective."

The report's most infamous passage warned, "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal."

Its results suggested that one main cause of urban violence was white racism and suggested that white America bore much of the responsibility for black rioting and rebellion. It called to create new jobs, construct new housing, and put a stop to de facto segregation in order to wipe out the destructive ghetto environment. In order to do so, the report recommended for government programs to provide needed services, to hire more diverse and sensitive police forces and, most notably, to invest billions in housing programs aimed at breaking up residential segregation.

The Commission's suggestions included, but were not limited to:

• "Unless there are sharp changes in the factors influencing Negro settlement patterns within metropolitan areas, there is little doubt that the trend toward Negro majorities will continue."
• "Providing employment for the swelling Negro ghetto population will require ...opening suburban residential areas to Negroes and encouraging them to move closer to industrial centers..."
• "...cities will have Negro majorities by 1985 and the suburbs ringing them will remain largely all white unless there are major changes in Negro fertility rates, in migration settlement patterns or public policy."
• "...we believe that the emphasis of the program should be changed from traditional publicly built slum based high rise projects to smaller units on scattered sites."

One often overlooked recommendation of the report was for an expansion of police surveillance in order to better deal with further unrest. The Commission recommended that:

police departments...develop means to obtain adequate intelligence for planning purposes...An intelligence unit staffed with full-time personnel should be established to gather, evaluate, analyze, and disseminate information on potential as well as actual civil disorders...It should use undercover police personnel and informants.

The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration released federal funding for local police forces in response.