WASHINGTON – President Lyndon Johnson’s commission on fiery riots of 1967 - with Illinois governor Otto Kerner at the helm - advocated big changes, but not the changes on Martin Luther King’s mind.
Fifty-three years later, cities have burned again.
A march on Washington in 1963 was mentioned in the Kerner Commission report, but King’s speech about his dream wasn’t quoted, nor was anyone at the march identified.
Commissioners placed King at the start of a movement, but not at the peak. They introduced him under the heading “Postwar Period,” after introducing the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
“What captured the imagination of the nation and of the Negro community in particular, and what was chiefly responsible for the growing use of direct action techniques, was the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott of 1955-56, which catapulted into national prominence the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.,” they wrote.
“Like the founders of CORE, King held to a Gandhian belief in the principles of pacifism.”
They described successful actions elsewhere in Alabama including a Supreme Court decision against gerrymandering in Tuskegee.
They announced the emergence of blacks no longer fearful of white hoodlums or mobs and ready to use their collective weight to achieve their ends.
“In this mood, King established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 to coordinate direct action activities in Southern cities,” they wrote.
They found direct action attained popularity not only because of King but also because of limited success from legal and legislative action.
“The organizing meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at Raleigh, North Carolina, in April 1960 was called by Martin Luther King, but within a year the youth considered King too cautious and broke with him,” they wrote.
They wrote that King dramatized issues with demonstrations at Selma, Alabama, in 1965, but they didn’t report that police injured 67 marchers.
They closed the book on King at that point, and the next section ran under the heading Failures of Direct Action.
Johnson’s decision not to appoint King to the commission pleased Tom Wicker of the New York Times, author of an official introduction.
He wrote that critics demanded to know, where were Stokely Carmichael, Floyd McKissick, Martin Luther King, Tom Hayden or James Baldwin?
He wrote that it took bona fide moderates to validate a case that had to be made.
“A commission made up of militants, or even influenced by them, could not conceivably have spoken with a voice so effective, so sure to be heard in white, moderate responsible America,” Wicker wrote.
When President Johnson created the commission, he told the nation it would attack conditions that breed despair and violence.
“We should attack them because there is simply no other way to achieve a decent and orderly society in America,” Johnson said.
Johnson appointed Kerner as chairman and New York mayor John Lindsay as vice chairman, both white males, to head the commission.
He appointed two black men, Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts and Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
He also appointed Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris, California Representative James Corman, and Ohio Representative William McCulloch, all white males; he appointed steelworker union president I. W. Abel, Litton Industries chairman Charles Thornton, and Atlanta police chief Herbert Jenkins, all white males; he appointed Kentucky commerce commissioner Katherine Peden, a white female.
They issued their report on March 1, 1968, declaring a democratic society couldn’t long endure when a substantial number of citizens “feel deeply aggrieved as a group, yet lack confidence in the government to rectify perceived injustice.”
They identified abrasive relations between police and blacks as a major source of tension in practically every city that experienced disruption.
They wrote that they heard about police harassing interracial couples, dispersing social gatherings, and stopping blacks on foot or in cars without obvious basis.
“These, together with contemptuous and degrading verbal abuse, have great impact in the ghetto,” they wrote.
They called on mayors to take initiative by participating fully in drafting guidelines for conduct and ensuring they were carried out.
They called on commanders to take firm steps to correct abuses.
They quoted University of Michigan professor Albert Reiss who told them close to half of officers in black areas showed extreme prejudice.
“Officers with bad reputations among residents in minority areas should be immediately reassigned to other areas,” they wrote.
They wrote that blacks believed police covered up for each other and received no more than token punishment, and they believed false arrest suits were doomed.
They found contact between black and white officers could help avoid stereotypes and prejudices in the minds of white police.
A footnote suggested assigning a black officer and a white officer to a patrol car for “increased ability to separate the truly suspect from the unfamiliar.”
The commissioners recommended independent review of all city agencies for mistreatment or incompetence.
They quoted St. Louis mayor Alfonso Cervantes, who told them neighborhoods couldn’t be operated on from outside and people within them should have a voice.
“It is often a voice that speaks with good sense, since the practical aspects of the needs of the ghetto people are so much clearer to the people there than they are to anyone else,” Cervantes said.
Commissioners failed to decide whether blacks and whites would, could, or should live together.
They tiptoed between strategies of enrichment and integration, stating enrichment by no means sought to perpetuate racial segregation.
“In the end, however, its premise is that disadvantaged Negroes can achieve equality of opportunity with whites while continuing in conditions of nearly complete separation,” they wrote.
They found it could greatly improve housing and the environment for blacks but it couldn’t provide the same range of choices as whites with equal incomes.
They proposed to combine enrichment with programs to encourage integration of substantial numbers of blacks into society outside the ghetto.
“No matter how ambitious or energetic such a program may be, few Negroes now living in central city ghettoes would be quickly integrated,” they wrote.
They found significant improvement in the environment essential in the meantime.
On schools, they recommended a comprehensive approach to reconstruct a child’s social and intellectual environment and develop literary skills.
They recommended rewards for teachers of disadvantaged children and suggested requiring service in such schools as a condition to advancement.
On jobs, they promised to find methods of escape for the poor.
They found creating jobs was easier than creating jobs with high earning power or upgrading workers to better employment.
“Yet only such upgrading will eliminate the fundamental basis of poverty and deprivation among Negro families,” they wrote.
Finally, they asked for money.
“Only a greatly enlarged commitment to national action, compassionate, massive, and sustained, backed by the will and resources of the most powerful and the richest nation on this earth, can shape a future that is compatible with the historic ideals of American society,” they wrote.
They found states must provide a fuller measure of financial and other resources to urban areas.
They found state leaders were in position to focus political and financial interests of suburbs on central cities.
Johnson liked the report so much he nominated Kerner for the Seventh Circuit appellate court ten days after it was submitted.
Senators confirmed him in a month.
A mistake he made as a rookie governor brought him down.
He bought stock options from racetrack manager Marje Everett at a reduced price in 1961, while his appointees controlled racing dates.
He sold the options in 1968, and Everett reported the transaction on her tax return.
That set off an investigation, and future governor Jim Thompson successfully prosecuted Kerner at trial.
Kerner started serving three years at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1974.
The prison bureau granted early release in 1976, so he could die in Chicago.