Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission Report)

In the summer of 1967, American cities erupted in flames. Newark. Detroit. Dozens of smaller explosions across the nation. President Lyndon Johnson appointed this commission to answer three questions: What happened? Why? What can be done? What they found shattered the comfortable mythology of American progress. The report documented how white America had created, and then abandoned, the black urban poor. It named police brutality as a spark, unemployment and segregation as the fuel. Its conclusion sliced through decades of evasion: America was dividing into two societies, 'one black, one white, separate and unequal.' The Nixon administration buried the report within weeks of taking office, calling it 'unacceptable.' But the words had already escaped. Fifty years later, this document remains the most honest official accounting of American racism ever published. It is a mirror the nation has never stopped avoiding.