Editing Kerner Commission (section)

{{Short description|National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1967–1968)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2024}}
{{Infobox U.S. Presidential Commission
| longtitle        = National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
| name             = Kerner Commission
| othershorttitles = 
| shorttitle       = 
| depiction        = 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..jpg
| depictioncaption = 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.
| depictionalt     = President Lyndon Baines Johnson is sitting with three committee members at a table in the Cabinet Room of the White House. Behind them, nine more committee members are standing, two of them only partially visible.
| documentimage    = 
| documentcaption  = 
| type             = 
| documentnumber   = 
| publicationdate  = 
| documentcitation = 
| summary          =
| status           = Defunct 
| purpose          = Investigate the causes of [[Long, hot summer of 1967|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 of Illinois|Governor]] [[Otto Kerner Jr.]] of [[Illinois]], was an 11-member [[Presidential Commission (United States)|Presidential Commission]] established in July 1967 by [[President of the United States|President]] [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] in {{Executive Order|11365}} to investigate the causes of over 150 riots throughout the country in [[long, hot summer of 1967|1967]] and to provide recommendations that would prevent them from reoccurring.<ref name="Johnson1967Remarks">{{cite web |last=Johnson |first=Lyndon B. |author-link=Lyndon B. Johnson |date=July 29, 1967 |editor1-last=Woolley |editor1-first=John T. |editor2-last=Peters |editor2-first=Gerhard |title=Remarks Upon Signing Order Establishing the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders |url=https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238046 |website=The American Presidency Project |publisher=University of California |location=Santa Barbara, CA}}</ref>

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 (social class)|riffraff]]") as many prior riot investigations had done<ref>See, for instance, the riot reports for the 1936 Harlem riot, the 1943 Detroit riot, and the 1965 Watts riot.</ref>  or to radicals or a foreign conspiracy as almost three-fourths of white America believed,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Woods |first=Randall |title=Prisoners of Hope |publisher=Basic Books |year=2016 |pages=321}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{Cite book |last=National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders |title=Report of the National Advisory Commission on civil Disorders |publisher=Bantam Books |year=1968}}</ref>

The Commission's 426-page report is regarded as "the touchstone for race relations"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Michael Lipsky and David J. Olson |title=Commission Politics: The Processing of Racial Crisis in America |publisher=Transaction Books |year=1977 |pages=137}}</ref> and as "one of the two seminal works"<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rick Loessberg and John Koskinen |date=September 2018 |title=Measuring the Distance: The Legacy of the Kerner Report |journal=Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences |volume=4 |issue=6 |pages=115}}</ref> on race in this country.  It was also a bestseller, outselling even the [[Warren Commission|Warren Report]] which dealt with President Kennedy's assassination.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Julian E. Zelizer |title=Introduction to the 2016 Edition, The Kerner Report |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2016 |location=Princeton, NJ |pages=xxxiv}}</ref>