Kerner Commission

Common card · No. 423607

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 race riots throughout the United States in the summer of 1967. The Commission sought to provide recommendations that would prevent the riots from reoccurring. The 426-page Kerner Report described the riots as a continuation of centuries of Black rebellion since the arrival of enslaved Africans in colonial North America and concluded that the direct cause of the riots lay in the social consequences of white racism, such as disparities in housing, employment, education and policing. However, the Johnson administration did not directly address the report's recommendations, as they were perceived to be unpopular with conservatives. The report was released in 1968 after seven months of investigation...

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