Editing Kerner Commission (section)

== Reception ==
The report received widespread media coverage and had many mixed responses. Media coverage primarily looked at the recommendations and the report's summary.

Conservatives disliked that blame was placed on white institutions and society and thought rioters were "let off the hook." The response of Black news groups was mixed towards the report. Some Black newspapers like the ''[[New York Amsterdam News]]'' and those they interviewed thought that the report did not have any new findings and was simply mirroring what Black people already knew. Others were happy that the report was simply acknowledging racism.

President Johnson, who had already pushed through the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964|Civil Rights Act]] and the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965|Voting Rights Act]], largely rejected the Commission's report.<ref name="Risen09">{{cite book |last=Risen |first=Clay |url=https://archive.org/details/nationonfireamer00rise |title=A Nation on Fire : America in the Wake of the King Assassination |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-470-17710-5 |location=Hoboken, N.J. |chapter=King, Johnson, and The Terrible, Glorious Thirty-First Day of March |url-access=registration}}</ref>  It is thought that he disliked it because of a number of reasons:  that the report did not adequately acknowledge the accomplishments of his Administration,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Steven M. Gillon |title=Separate and Unequal |publisher=Basic Books |year=2018 |location=New York |pages=265}}</ref> that its call for "unprecedented levels of funding" was unrealistic and only exacerbated the budget problems that he was already having with Congress,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Julian E. Zelizer |title=Introduction to the 2016 Edition, The Kerner Report |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton, NJ |publication-date=2016 |pages=xxxii}}</ref> and that he felt that a conspiracy had to be involved given the magnitude of the rioting.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Randall B. Woods |title=Prisoners of Hope |publisher=Basic Books |location=New York |publication-date=2016 |pages=270–271}}</ref>

A Harris poll taken about a month after the report was released found that only 37% of surveyed whites believed that the riots were mainly caused by racism.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Louis Harris |date=April 16, 1968 |title=Differences in Races' Opinions |work=Los Angeles Times |pages=A5}}</ref>  However, an earlier poll taken immediately after the Newark and Detroit riots had found that a much smaller amount—16%--had believed this to be true eight months earlier.<ref>{{Cite news |date=August 21, 1967 |title=The Basic Causes of Negro Rioting |work=Newsweek |pages=19}}</ref>