 section 1 of the Kerner Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Kerner Commission Report. Summary. Part 1. The summer of 1967 again brought racial disorders to American cities, and with them shock, fear, and bewilderment to the nation. The worst came during a two-week period in July, first in Newark and then in Detroit, each set off a chain reaction in neighboring communities. On July 28, 1967, the President of the United States established this commission and directed us to answer three basic questions. What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again? To respond to these questions, we have undertaken a broad range of studies and investigations. We have visited the riot cities. We have heard many witnesses. We have sought the counsel of experts across the country. This is our basic conclusion. Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal. Reaction to last summer's disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life. They now threaten the future of every American. This deepening racial division is not inevitable. The movement apart can be reversed. Choice is still possible. Our principal task is to define that choice and to press for a national resolution. To pursue our present course will involve the continuing polarization of the American community and ultimately the destruction of basic democratic values. The alternative is not blind repression or capitulation to lawlessness. It is the realization of common opportunities for all within a single society. This alternative will require a commitment to national action, compassionate, massive and sustained, backed by the resources of the most powerful and the richest nation on this earth. From every American it will require new attitudes, new understanding, and above all, new will. The vital needs of the nation must be met, hard choices must be made, and if necessary new taxes enacted. Violence cannot build a better society. Disruption and disorder nourish repression, not justice. They strike at the freedom of every citizen. The community cannot, it will not, tolerate coercion and mob rule. Violence and destruction must be ended, in the streets of the ghetto and in the lives of people. Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro 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. It is time now to turn with all the purpose at our command to the major unfinished business of this nation. It is time to adopt strategies for action that will produce quick and visible progress. It is time to make good the promises of American democracy to all citizens, urban and rural, white and black, Spanish surname, American Indian, and every minority group. Our recommendations embrace three basic principles. To mount programs on a scale equal to the dimension of the problems. To aim these programs for high impact in the immediate future in order to close the gap between promise and performance. To undertake new initiatives and experiments that can change the system of failure and frustration that now dominates the ghetto and weakens our society. These programs will require unprecedented levels of funding and performance. But they neither probe deeper nor demand more than the problems which call them forth. There can be no higher priority for national action and no higher claim on the nation's conscience. We issue this report now, four months before the date called for by the President. Much remains that can be learned. Continued study is essential. As commissioners we have worked together with a sense of the greatest urgency and have sought to compose whatever differences exist among us. Some differences remain. But the gravity of the problem and the pressing need for action are too clear to allow further delay in the issuance of this report. Part one. What happened? Chapter one. Profiles of disorder. The report contains profiles of a selection of the disorders that took place during the summer of 1967. These profiles are designed to indicate how the disorders happened, who participated in them, and how local officials, police forces, and the National Guard responded. Illustrative excerpts follow. Newark. It was decided to attempt to channel the energies of the people into a nonviolent protest. While Lofton promised the crowd that a full investigation would be made of the Smith incident, the other Negro leaders began urging those on the scene to form a line of march toward the city hall. Some persons joined the line of march, others milled about in the narrow street. From the dark grounds of the housing project came a barrage of rocks. Some of them fell among the crowd. Others hit persons in the line of march. Many smashed the windows of the police station. The rock throwing it was believed was the work of youngsters. Approximately 2,500 children lived in the housing project. Just at the same time, an old car was set afire in a parking lot. The line of march began to disintegrate. The police, their heads protected by the World War I type helmets, sallied forth to disperse the crowd. A fire engine, arriving on the scene, was pelted with rocks. As police drove people away from the station, they scattered in all directions. A few minutes later a nearby liquor store was broken into. Some persons, seeing a caravan of cabs appear at city hall to protest Smith's arrest, interpreted this as evidence that the disturbance had been organized and generated rumors to that effect. However, only a few stores were looted. Within a short period of time, the disorder appeared to have run its course. On Saturday, July 15, director of police Dominic Spina received a report of snipers in a housing project. When he arrived he saw approximately 100 National Guardsmen and police officers crouching behind vehicles, hiding in corners and lying on the ground around the edge of the courtyard. Since everything appeared quiet and it was broad daylight, Spina walked directly down the middle of the street. Nothing happened. As he came to the last building of the complex, he heard a shot. All around him the troopers jumped, believing themselves to be under sniper fire. A moment later a young Guardsman ran from behind a building. The director of police went over and asked him if he had fired the shot. The soldier said yes. He had fired to scare a man away from a window. That his orders were to keep everyone away from windows. Spina said he told the soldier, Do you know what you just did? You have now created a state of hysteria. Every Guardsman up and down this street and every state policeman and every city policeman that is present thinks that somebody just fired a shot and that it is probably a sniper. A short time later more gunshots were heard. Investigating, Spina came upon a Puerto Rican sitting on a wall and replied to a question as to whether he knew where the firing is coming from. The man said, That's no firing. That's fireworks. If you look up to the fourth floor you will see the people who are throwing down these cherry bombs. By this time four truckloads of National Guardsmen had arrived and troopers and policemen were again crouched everywhere looking for a sniper. The director of police remained at the scene for three hours and the only shot fired was the one by the Guardsmen. Nevertheless at six o'clock that evening two columns of National Guardsmen and state troopers were directing mass fire at the Hayes housing project in response to what they believed were snipers. Detroit. A spirit of carefree nihilism was taking hold. To riot and destroy appeared more and more to become ends in themselves. Late Sunday afternoon it appeared to one observer that the young people were dancing amidst the flames. A Negro plainclothes officer was standing at an intersection when a man threw a Molotov cocktail into a business establishment at the corner. In the heat of the afternoon, fanned by 20 to 25 mile per hour winds of both Sunday and Monday, the fire reached the home next door within minutes. As residents uselessly sprayed the flames with garden hoses, the fire jumped from roof to roof of adjacent two and three story buildings. Within the hour the entire block was in flames. The ninth house in the burning row belonged to the arsonist who had thrown the Molotov cocktail. Employed as a private guard, 55 year old Julius L. Dorsey, a Negro, was standing in front of the market when accosted by two Negro men and a woman. They demanded he permit them to loot the market. He ignored their demands. They began to berate him. He asked the neighbor to call the police. As the argument grew more heated, Dorsey fired three shots from his pistol into the air. The police radio reported looters, they have rifles, a patrol car driven by a police officer and carrying three National Guardsmen arrived. As the looters fled, the law enforcement personnel opened fire. When the firing seized, one person lay dead. He was Julius L. Dorsey. As the riot alternately waxed and waned, one area of the ghetto remained insulated. On the northeast side of the residence of some 150 square blocks inhabited by 21,000 persons, had in 1966 banded together in the positive neighborhood action committees, PNAC, with professional help from the Institute of Urban Dynamics. They had organized block clubs and made plans for the improvement of the neighborhood. When the riot broke out, the residents, through the block clubs, were able to organize quickly. Youngsters agreeing to stay in the neighborhood participated in detouring traffic. While many persons reportedly sympathized with the idea of rebellion against the system, only two small fires were set, one in an empty building. According to Lieutenant General Throckmorton and Colonel Bowling, the city at this time was saturated with fear. The National Guardsmen were afraid, the residents were afraid, and the police were afraid. Numerous persons, the majority of them Negroes were being injured by gunshots of undetermined origin. The general and his staff felt that the major task of the troops was to reduce the fear and restore an air of normalcy. In order to accomplish this, every effort was made to establish contact and rapport between the troops and the residents. The soldiers, 20% of whom were Negro, began helping to clean up the streets, collect garbage, and trace persons who had disappeared in the confusion. Residents in the neighborhoods responded with soup and sandwiches for the troops. In areas where the National Guard tried to establish rapport with the citizens, there was a smaller response. New Brunswick. A short time later, elements of the crowd, an older and rougher one than the night before, appeared in front of the police station. The participants wanted to see the mayor. Mayor Patricia Sheehan went out onto the steps of the station. Using a bullhorn, she talked to the people and asked that she be given an opportunity to correct conditions. The crowd was boisterous. Some persons challenged the mayor. But finally, the opinion, she's new, give her a chance, prevailed. A demand was issued by the people in the crowd that all persons arrested the previous night be released. Told that this already had been done, the people were suspicious. They asked to be allowed to inspect the jail cells. It was agreed to permit representatives of the people to look in the cells, to satisfy themselves that everyone had been released. The crowd dispersed. The new Brunswick riot had failed to materialize. Chapter Two. Patterns of Disorder The typical riot did not take place. The disorders of 1967 were unusual, irregular, complex and unpredictable social processes. Like most human events, they did not unfold in an orderly sequence. However, an analysis of our survey information leads to some conclusions about the riot process. In general, the civil disorders of 1967 involved Negroes acting against local symbols of white American society, authority and property in Negro neighborhoods, rather than against white persons. Of 164 disorders reported during the first nine months of 1967, eight, five percent, were major in terms of violence and damage. 33, 20 percent, were serious but not major. 123, 75 percent, were minor and undoubtedly would not have received national attention as riots had the nation not been sensitized by the more serious outbreaks. In the 1975 disorders studied by a Senate subcommittee, 83 deaths were reported. 82 percent of the deaths and more than half the injuries occurred in Newark and Detroit. About 10 percent of the dead and 38 percent of the injured were public employees, primarily law officers and firemen. The overwhelming majority of the persons killed or injured in all of the disorders were Negro civilians. Initial damage estimates were greatly exaggerated. In Detroit, newspaper damage estimates at first ranged from 200 million to 500 million. The highest recent estimate is 45 million. In Newark, early estimates ranged from 15 to 25 million dollars. A month later, damage was estimated at 10.2 million dollars over 80 percent in inventory losses. In the 24 disorders in 23 cities which we surveyed, the final incident before the outbreak of disorder and the initial violence itself generally took place in the evening or at night, at a place in which it was normal for many people to be on the streets. Violence usually occurred almost immediately following the occurrence of the final precipitating incident and then escalated rapidly. With but few exceptions, violence subsided during the day and flared rapidly again at night. The night day cycles continued through the early period of the major's disorders. Disorder generally began with the rock and bottle throwing and window breaking. Once store windows were broken, looting usually followed. Disorder did not erupt as a result of a single triggering or precipitating incident. Instead it was generated out of an increasingly disturbed social atmosphere in which typically a series of tension-heightening incidents over a period of weeks or months became linked in the minds of many in the Negro community with a reservoir of underlying grievances. At some point in the mounting tension, a further incident, in itself often routine or trivial, became the breaking point and the tension spilled over into violence. Prior incidents which increased tensions and ultimately led to violence were police actions in almost half the cases. Police actions were final incidents before the outbreak of violence in 12 of the 24 surveyed disorders. No particular control tactic was successful in every situation. The varied effectiveness of control techniques emphasizes the need for advanced training, planning, adequate intelligence systems, and knowledge of the ghetto community. Negotiations between Negroes, including your militants as well as older Negro leaders and white officials concerning terms of peace, occurred during virtually all the disorders surveyed. In many cases, these negotiations involved discussion of underlying grievances, as well as the handling of the disorder by control of authorities. The typical rioter was a teenager or young adult, a lifelong resident of the city in which he rioted, a high school dropout. He was nevertheless somewhat better educated than his non-rioting Negro neighbor and was usually underemployed or employed in a menial job. He was proud of his race, extremely hostile to both whites and middle class Negroes, and although informed about politics, highly distrustful of the political system. A Detroit survey revealed that approximately 11% of the total residents of two riot areas admitted participation in the rioting. 20 to 25% identify themselves as bystanders. Over 16% identify themselves as counter rioters who urged rioters to cool it. And the remaining 48 to 53% said they were at home or elsewhere and did not participate. In a survey of Negro males between the ages of 15 and 35 residing in the disturbance area in Newark, about 45% identified themselves as rioters, and about 55% as non-involved. Most rioters were young Negro males. Nearly 53% of arrestees were between 15 and 24 years of age, nearly 81% between 15 and 35. In Detroit and Newark, about 74% of the rioters were brought up in the North. In contrast, of the non-involved, 36% in Detroit and 52% in Newark were brought up in the North. What the rioters appeared to be seeking was fuller participation in the social order and the material benefits enjoyed by the majority of American citizens. Rather than rejecting the American system, they were anxious to obtain a place for themselves in it. Numerous Negro counter rioters walked the streets urging rioters to cool it. The typical counter rioter was better educated and had higher income than either the rioter or the non-involved. The proportion of Negroes in local government was substantially smaller than the Negro proportion of population. Only three of the 20 cities studied had more than one Negro legislator. None had ever had a Negro mayor or city manager. In only four cities did Negroes hold other important policy making positions, or serve as heads of municipal departments. Although almost all cities had some sort of formal grievance mechanism for handling citizen complaints, this typically was regarded by Negroes as ineffective, and was generally ignored. All those specific grievances varied from city to city, at least 12 deeply held grievances can be identified and ranked into three levels of relative intensity. The first level of intensity, one policy practices to unemployment and underemployment, three inadequate housing, second level of intensity for inadequate education, five poor recreation facilities and programs, six ineffectiveness of the political structure and grievance mechanisms. Third level of intensity, seven disrespectful white attitudes, eight discriminatory administration of justice, nine inadequacy of federal programs, 10 inadequacy of municipal services, 11 discriminatory consumer and credit practices, 12 inadequate welfare programs. The results of a three city survey of various federal programs, manpower, education, housing, welfare and community action, indicate that despite substantial expenditures, the number of persons assisted constituted only a fraction of those in need. The background of disorder is often as complex and difficult to analyze as the disorder itself, but we find that certain general conclusions can be drawn. Social and economic conditions in the riot cities constituted a clear pattern of severe disadvantage for Negroes, compared with whites. Whether the Negroes lived in the area where the riot took place or outside it. Negroes had completed fewer years of education and fewer had attended high school. Negroes were twice as likely to be unemployed and three times as likely to be in unskilled and service jobs. Negroes averaged 70% of the income earned by whites and were more than twice as likely to be living in poverty. Although housing cost Negroes relatively more, they had worse housing, three times as likely to be overcrowded and substandard when compared to white suburbs, the relative disadvantage is even more pronounced. A study of the aftermath of disorder leads to disturbing conclusions. We find that despite the institution of some post riot programs, little basic change in the conditions underlying the outbreak of disorder has taken place. Actions to ameliorate Negro grievances have been limited and sporadic, with but few exceptions. They have not significantly reduced tensions. In several cities, the principal official response has been to train and equip the police with more sophisticated weapons. In several cities, increasing polarization is evident with continuing breakdown of interracial communication and growth of white segregationist or black separatist groups. Chapter three. Organized activity. The President directed the Commission to investigate to what extent, if any, there had been planning or organization in any of the riots. To carry out this part of the President's charge, the Committee established a special investigative staff supplementing the field teams that made the general examination of the riots in 23 cities. The unit examined data collected by federal agencies and congressional committees, including thousands of documents supplied by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, gathered and evaluated information from local and state law enforcement agencies and officials, and conducted its own field investigation in selected cities. On the basis of all the information collected, the Commission concludes that the urban disorders of the summer of 1967 were not caused by, nor were they the consequence of any organized plan or conspiracy. Specifically, the Commission has found no evidence that all or any of the disorders or the incidents that led to them were planned or directed by any organization or group, international, national or local. Militant organizations, local and national and individual agitators who repeatedly forecast and called for violence, were active in the spring and summer of 1967. We believe that they sought to encourage violence and that they helped to create an atmosphere that contributed to the outbreak of disorder. We recognize that the continuation of disorders and the polarization of the races would provide fertile ground for organized exploitation in the future. Investigations of organized activity are continuing at all levels of government, including committees of Congress. These investigations relate not only to the disorders of 1967, but also to the actions of groups and individuals, particularly in schools and colleges, during this last fall and winter. The Commission has cooperated in these investigations. They should continue. End of Section 1. Section 2 of the Current or Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Michelle Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in December 2019. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the Kerner Commission Report. Section 2, Summary, Part 2. Why did it happen? Chapter 4, The Basic Causes. In addressing the question, Why did it happen? We shift our focus from the local to the national scene, from the particular events of the summer of 1967 to the factors within the society at large that created a mood of violence among many urban Negroes. These factors are complex and interacting. They vary significantly in their effect from city to city and from year to year. And the consequences of one disorder generating new grievances and new demands become the causes of the next. Thus was created the quote, Thicket of tension conflicting evidence and extreme opinions and quote cited by the President. Despite these complexities, certain fundamental matters are clear. Of these, the most fundamental is the racial attitude and behavior of white Americans toward the black Americans. Race prejudice has shaped our history decisively. It now threatens to affect our future. White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture, which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War Two. Among the ingredients of this mixture are point pervasive discrimination and segregation in employment, education and housing, which have resulted in the continuing exclusion of great numbers of Negroes from the benefits of economic progress. Point black in migration and white exodus, which have produced the massive and growing concentrations of impoverished Negroes in our major cities, creating a growing crisis of deteriorating facilities and services and unmet human needs. Point the black ghettos where segregation and poverty converge on the young to destroy opportunity and enforce failure. Crime, drug addiction, dependency on welfare and bitterness and resentment against society in general and white society in particular are the result. At the same time, most whites and some Negroes outside the ghetto have prospered to a degree unparalleled in the history of civilization through television and other media, this affluence has been flaunted before the eyes of the Negro poor and the jobless ghetto youth. Yet these facts alone cannot be said to have caused the disorders. Recently, other powerful ingredients have begun to catalyze the mixture. Point frustrated hopes are the residue of the unfulfilled expectations aroused by the great judicial and legislative victories of the civil rights movement and the dramatic struggle for equal rights in the South. Point the climate that tends toward approval and encouragement of violence as a form of protest has been created by white terrorism directed against nonviolent protest by the open defiance of law and federal authority by state and local officials resisting desegregation and by some protest groups engaging in civil disobedience who turn their backs on nonviolence go beyond the constitutionally protected rights of petition and free assembly and resort to violence to attempt to compel alteration of laws and policies with which they disagree. Point the frustrations of powerlessness have led some Negroes to the conviction that there is no effective alternative to violence as a means of achieving redress of grievances and of moving the system. These frustrations are reflected in alienation and hostility toward the institutions of law and government and the white society which controls them and in the reach toward racial consciousness and solidarity reflected in the slogan black power. Point a new mood has sprung up among Negroes particularly among the young in which self esteem and enhanced racial pride are replacing apathy and submission to the system. Point the police are not merely a spark factor. To some Negroes police have come to symbolize white power, white racism and white repression. And the fact is that many police do reflect and express these white attitudes. The atmosphere of hostility and cynicism is reinforced by a widespread belief among Negroes in the existence of police brutality and in a double standard of justice and protection. One for Negroes and one for whites. To this point we have attempted to identify the prime components of the explosive mixture. In the chapters that follow we seek to analyze them in the perspective of history. Their meaning however is clear. In the summer of 1967 we have seen in our cities a chain reaction of racial violence. If we are heedless none of us shall escape the consequences. Chapter five. Rejection and protest. An historical sketch. The causes of recent racial disorders are embedded in a tangle of issues and circumstances social, economic, political and psychological which arise out of the historic pattern of Negro white relations in America. In this chapter we trace the pattern identify the recurrent themes of Negro protest and most importantly provide a perspective on the protest activities of the present era. We describe the Negro's experience in America and the development of slavery as an institution. We show his persistence striving for equality in the face of rigidly maintained social, economic and educational barriers and repeated mob violence. We portray the ebb and flow of the doctrinal tides, accommodation, separatism and self-help and their relationship to the current theme of Black Power. We conclude. The Black Power advocates of today consciously feel that they are the most militant group in the Negro protest movement. Yet they have retreated from a direct confrontation with American society on the issue of integration and by preaching separatism unconsciously function as an accommodation to white racism. Much of their economic program as well as their interest in Negro history, self-help, racial solidarity and separation is reminiscent of Booker T. Washington. The rhetoric is different, but the ideas are remarkably similar. Chapter six, the formation of the racial ghettos. Footnote, the term ghetto as used in this report refers to an area within a city characterized by poverty and acute social disorganization and inhabited by members of a racial or ethnic group under conditions of involuntary segregation. End of footnote. Throughout the 20th century, the Negro population of the United States has been moving steadily from rural areas to urban and from south to north and west. In 1910, 91% of the nation's 9.8 million Negroes lived in the south and only 27% of American Negroes lived in cities of 2,500 persons or more. Between 1910 and 1966, the total Negro population more than doubled, reaching 21.5 million and the number living in metropolitan areas rose more than five fold from 2.6 million to 14.8 million. The number outside the south rose 11 fold from 880,000 to 9.7 million. Negro migration from the south has resulted from the expectation of thousands of new and highly paid jobs for unskilled workers in the north and the shift to mechanized farming in the south. However, the Negro migration is small when compared to earlier waves of European immigrants. Even between 1960 and 1966, there were 1.8 million immigrants from abroad compared to 613,000 Negroes who arrived in the north and the west from the south. As a result of the growing number of Negroes in urban areas, natural increase has replaced migration as the primary source of Negro population increase in the cities. Nevertheless, Negro migration from the south will continue unless economic conditions there change dramatically. Basic data concerning Negro urbanization trends indicate that point, almost all Negro population growth, 98% from 1950 to 1966 is occurring within metropolitan areas, primarily within central cities. Footnote, a central city is the largest city of a standard metropolitan statistical area, that is, a metropolitan area containing at least one city of 50,000 or more inhabitants. End of footnote. Point, the vast majority of white population growth, 78% from 1960 to 1966, is occurring in suburban portions of metropolitan areas. Since 1960, white central city population has declined by 1.3 million. Point, as a result, central cities are becoming more heavily Negro, while the suburban fringes around them remain almost entirely white. Point, the 12 largest central cities now contain over two-thirds of the Negro population outside the south and one-third of the Negro total in the United States. Within the cities, Negroes have been excluded from white residential areas through discriminatory practices. Just as significant is the withdrawal of white families from or their refusal to enter neighborhoods where Negroes are moving or already residing. About 20% of the urban population of the United States changes residents every year. The refusal of whites to move into changing areas when vacancies occur means that the most vacancies eventually are occupied by Negroes. The result, according to a recent study, is that in 1960 the average segregation index for 207 of the largest United States cities was 86.2. In other words, to create an unsegregated population district, an average of over 86% of all Negroes would have to change their place of residence within the city. Chapter 7, unemployment, family structure, and social disorganization. Although there have been gains in Negro income nationally and a decline in the number of Negroes below the poverty level, the condition of Negroes in the central city remains in the state of crisis. Between two and 2.5 million Negroes, 16 to 20% of the total Negro population of all central cities live in squalor and deprivation in ghetto neighborhoods. Employment is a key problem. It not only controls the present for the Negro American, but in a most profound way it is creating the future as well. Yet despite continuing economic growth and declining national unemployment rates, the unemployment rate for Negroes in 1967 was more than double that for whites. Equally important is the undesirable nature of many jobs open to Negroes and other minorities. Negro men are more than three times as likely as white men to be in low paying, unskilled, or service jobs. This concentration of male Negro employment at the lowest end of the occupational scale is the single most important cause of poverty among Negroes. In one study of low income neighborhoods, the sub-employment rate, including both unemployment and underemployment, was about 33%, or 8.8 times greater than the overall unemployment rate for all United States workers. Employment problems aggravated by the constant arrival of new unemployed migrants, many of them from depressed rural areas, create persistent poverty in the ghetto. In 1966, about 11.9% of the nation's whites and 40.6% of its non-whites were below the poverty level defined by the Social Security Administration, currently $3,335 per year for an urban family of four. Over 40% of the non-whites below the poverty level live in the central cities. Employment problems have drastic social impact in the ghetto. Men who are chronically unemployed or employed in the lowest status jobs are often unable or unwilling to remain with their families. The handicap imposed on children growing up without fathers in an atmosphere of poverty and deprivation is increased as mothers are forced to work to provide support. The culture of poverty that results from unemployment and family breakup generates a system of ruthless exploitative relationships within the ghetto. Prostitution, dope addiction, and crime create an environmental jungle characterized by personal insecurity and tension. Children growing up under such conditions are likely participants in civil disorder. Chapter 8, conditions of life in the racial ghetto. A striking difference in environment from that of white middle-class Americans profoundly influences the lives of residents of the ghetto. Crime rates consistently higher than in other areas create a pronounced sense of insecurity. For example, in one city one low-income negro district had 35 times as many serious crimes against persons as a high-income white district. Unless drastic steps are taken the crime problems in poverty areas are likely to continue to multiply as the growing youth and rapid urbanization of the population outstrips police resources. Poor health and sanitation conditions in the ghetto result in higher mortality rates, a higher incidence of major diseases, and lower availability and utilization of medical services. The infant mortality rate for non-white babies under the age of one month is 58 percent higher than for whites. For one to 12 months it is almost three times as high. The level of sanitation in the ghetto is far below that in high-income areas. Garbage collection is often inadequate. Of an estimated 14,000 cases of rat bite in the United States in 1965 most were in ghetto neighborhoods. Ghetto residents believe they are exploited by local merchants and evidence substantiates some of these beliefs. A study conducted in one city by the Federal Trade Commission showed that distinctly higher prices were charged for goods sold in ghetto stores than in other areas. Lack of knowledge regarding credit purchasing creates special pitfalls for the disadvantaged. In many states garnishment practices compound these difficulties by allowing creditors to deprive individuals of their wages without hearing or trial. Chapter nine, comparing the immigrant and Negro experience. In this chapter we address ourselves to the fundamental question that many white Americans are asking. Why have so many Negroes unlike the European immigrants been unable to escape from the ghetto and from poverty? We believe the following factors play a part. Point, the maturing economy. When the European immigrants arrived they gained an economic foothold by providing the unskilled labor needed by industry. Unlike the immigrant the Negro migrant found little opportunity in the city. The economy by then matured had little use for the unskilled labor he had to offer. Point, the disability of race. The structure of discrimination has stringently narrowed opportunities for the Negro and restricted his prospects. European immigrants suffered from discrimination but never so pervasively. Point, entry into the political system. The immigrants usually settled in rapidly growing cities with powerful and expanding political machines which traded economic advantages for political support. Ward-level grievance machinery as well as personal representation enabled the immigrant to make his voice heard and his power felt. By the time the Negro arrived these political machines were no longer so powerful or so well equipped to provide jobs or other favors and in many cases were unwilling to share their influence with Negroes. Point, cultural factors. Coming from societies with a low standard of living and at a time when job aspirations were low the immigrants sensed little deprivation in being forced to take the less desirable and poorer paying jobs. Their large and cohesive families contributed to total income. Their vision of the future one that led to a life outside of the ghetto provided the incentive necessary to endure the present. Although Negro men worked as hard as the immigrants they were unable to support their families. The entrepreneurial opportunities had vanished. As a result of slavery and long periods of unemployment the Negro family structure had become matriarchal. The males played a secondary and marginal family role, one which offered little compensation for their hard and unrewarding labor. Above all segregation denied Negroes access to good jobs and the opportunity to leave the ghetto. For them the future seemed to lead only to a dead end. Today whites tend to exaggerate how well and quickly they escaped from poverty. The fact is that immigrants who came from rural backgrounds, as many Negroes do, are only now after three generations finally beginning to move into the middle class. By contrast Negroes began concentrating in the city less than two generations ago and under much less favorable conditions. Although some Negroes have escaped poverty few have been able to escape the urban ghetto. End of section two. Section three of the Kerner commission report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer. Please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Michelle Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana in December 2019. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the Kerner commission report. Section three summary part three. Part three. What can be done? Chapter 10. The community response. Our investigation of the 1967 riot cities establishes that virtually every major episode of violence was foreshadowed by an accumulation of unresolved grievances and by widespread dissatisfaction among Negroes with the unwillingness or the inability of local government to respond. Overcoming these conditions is essential for community support of law enforcement and civil order. City governments need new and more vital channels of communication to the residents of the ghetto. They need to improve their capacity to respond effectively to community needs before they become community grievances and they need to provide opportunity for meaningful involvement of ghetto residents in shaping policies and programs which affect the community. The commission recommends that local governments point develop neighborhood action task forces as joint community government efforts through which more effective communication can be achieved and the delivery of city services to ghetto residents improved. Point establish comprehensive grievance response mechanisms in order to bring all public agencies under public scrutiny. Point bring the institutions of local government closer to the people they serve by establishing neighborhood outlets for local state and federal administrative and public service agencies. Point expand opportunities for ghetto residents to participate in the formulation of public policy and the implementation of programs affecting them through improved political representation, creation of institutional channels for community action, expansion of legal services and legislative hearings on ghetto problems. In this effort city governments will require state and federal support. The commission recommends point state and federal financial assistance for mayors and city councils to support the research consultants staff and other resources needed to respond effectively to federal program initiatives. Point state cooperation and providing municipalities with the jurisdictional tools needed to deal with their problems. A fuller measure of financial aid to urban areas and the focusing of the interests of suburban communities on the physical social and cultural environment of the central city. Chapter 11 police and the community the abrasive relationship between the police and the minority communities has been a major and explosive source of grievance, tension and disorder. The blame must be shared by the total society. The police are faced with demands for increased protection and service in the ghetto yet the aggressive patrol practices thought necessary to meet these demands themselves create tension and hostility. The resulting grievances have been further aggravated by the lack of effective mechanisms for handling complaints against the police. Special programs for bettering police community relations have been instituted but these alone are not enough. Police administrators with the guidance of public officials and the support of the entire community must take vigorous action to improve law enforcement and to decrease the potential for disorder. The commission recommends that city government and police authorities point review police operations in the ghetto to ensure proper conduct by police officers and eliminate abrasive practices. Point provide more adequate police protection to ghetto residents to eliminate their high sense of insecurity and the belief of many negro citizens in the existence of a dual standard of law enforcement. Point establish fair and effective mechanisms for the redress of grievances against the police and other municipal employees. Point develop and adopt policy guidelines to assist officers in making critical decisions in areas where police conduct can create tension. Point develop and use innovative programs to ensure widespread community support for law enforcement. Point recruit more negroes into the regular police force and review promotion policies to ensure fair promotion for negro officers. Point establish a community service officer program to attract ghetto youths between the ages of 17 and 21 to police work. These junior officers would perform duties in ghetto neighborhoods but would not have full police authority. The federal government should provide support equal to 90 percent of the costs of employing CSOs on the basis of one for every 10 regular officers. Chapter 12 control of disorder preserving civil peace is the first responsibility of government unless the rule of law prevails our society will lack not only order but also the environment essential to social and economic progress. The maintenance of civil order cannot be left to the police alone. The police need guidance as well as support from mayors and other public officials. It is the responsibility of public officials to determine proper police policies support adequate police standards for personnel and performance and participate in planning for the control of disorders. To maintain control of incidents which could lead to disorders the commission recommends that local officials point assigned seasoned well-trained policemen and supervisory officers to patrol ghetto areas and to respond to disturbances. Point develop plans which will quickly muster maximum police manpower and highly qualified senior commanders at the outbreak of disorders. Point provide special training in the prevention of disorders and prepare police for riot control and for operation in units with adequate command and control and field communication for proper discipline and effectiveness. Point develop guidelines governing the use of control equipment and provide alternatives to the use of lethal weapons. Federal support for research in this area is needed. Point establish an intelligence system to provide police and other public officials with reliable information that may help to prevent the outbreak of the disorder and to institute effective control measures in the event a riot erupts. Point develop continuing contacts with ghetto residents to make use of the forces for order which exist within the community. Point establish machinery for neutralizing rumors and enabling negro leaders and residents to obtain the facts. Create special rumor details to collect evaluate and dispel rumors that may lead to a civil disorder. The commission believes that there is a grave danger that some communities may resort to the indiscriminate and excessive use of force. The harmful effects of overreaction are incalculable. The commission condemns moves to equip police departments with mass destruction weapons such as automatic rifles machine guns and tanks. Weapons which are designed to destroy not to control have no place in densely populated urban communities. The commission recognizes the sound principle of local authority and responsibility in law enforcement but recommends that the federal government share in the financing of programs for improvement of police forces both in their normal law enforcement activities as well as in their response to civil disorders. To assist government authorities in planning their response to civil disorder this report contains a supplement on control of disorder. It deals with specific problems encountered during riot control operations and includes point assessment of the present capabilities of police national guard and army forces to control major riots and recommendations for improvement. Point recommended means by which the control operations of those forces may be coordinated with the response of other agencies such as fire departments and with the community at large. Point recommendations for review and revision of federal state and local laws needed to provide the framework for control efforts and for the call-up and interrelated action of public safety forces. Chapter 13 the administration of justice under emergency conditions in many of the cities which experienced disorders last summer there were recurring breakdowns in the mechanisms for processing and prosecuting and protecting arrested persons. These resulted mainly from long-standing structural deficiencies in criminal court systems and from the failure of communities to anticipate and plan for the emergency demands of civil disorders. In part because of this there were few successful prosecutions for serious crimes committed during the riots. In those cities where mass arrests occurred many arrestees were deprived of basic legal rights. The commission recommends that the cities and states point undertake reform of the lower courts so as to improve the quality of justice rendered under normal conditions. Point planned comprehensive measures by which the criminal justice system may be supplemented during civil disorders so that its deliberative functions are protected and the quality of justice is maintained. Such emergency plans require broad community participation and dedicated leadership by the bench and bar. They should include point laws sufficient to deter and punish riot conduct, point additional judges bail and probation officers and clerical staff, point arrangements for volunteer lawyers to help prosecutors and to represent riot defendants at every stage of proceedings, point policies to ensure proper and individual bail, arraignment, free trial, trial and sentencing proceedings, point procedures for processing arrested persons such as summons and release and release on personal recognizance which permit separation of minor offenders from those dangerous to the community in order that serious offenders may be detained and prosecuted effectively. Point adequate emergency processing and detention facilities. Chapter 14 damages repair and compensation. The commission recommends that the federal government point amend the federal disaster act which now applies only to natural disasters to permit federal emergency food and medical assistance to cities during major civil disorders and provide long-term economic assistance afterwards. Point with the cooperation of the states create incentives for the private insurance industry to provide more adequate property insurance coverage in inner city areas. The commission endorses the report of the national advisory panel on insurance in riot affected areas entitled meeting the insurance crisis of our cities. Chapter 15 the news media and the disorders. In his charge to the commission the president asked what effect do the mass media have on the riots? The commission determined that the answer to the president's question did not lie solely in the performance of the press and broadcasters in reporting the riots. Our analysis had to consider also the overall treatment by the media of the Negro ghettos community relations racial attitudes and poverty day by day and month by month year in and year out. A wide range of interviews with government officials law enforcement authorities media personnel and other citizens including ghettos residents as well as quantitative analysis of riot coverage and a special conference with industry representatives leads us to conclude that point despite instances of sensationalism inaccuracy and distortion newspapers radio and television tried on the whole to give a balanced factual account of the 1967 disorders. Point elements of the news media failed to portray accurately the scale and character of the violence that occurred last summer. The overall effect was we believe an exaggeration of both mood and event. Point important segments of the media failed to report adequately on the causes and the consequences of civil disorders and on the underlying problems of race relations. They have not communicated to the majority of their audience which is white a sense of the degradation misery and hopelessness of life in the ghetto. These failings must be corrected and the improvement must come from within the industry. Freedom of the press is not the issue. Any effort to impose governmental restrictions would be inconsistent with fundamental constitutional precepts. We have seen evidence that the news media are becoming aware of and concerned about their performance in this field as that concern grows coverage will improve but much more must be done and it must be done soon. The commission recommends that the media, point, expand coverage of the negro community and of race problems through permanent assignment of reporters familiar with urban and racial affairs and through establishment of more and better links with the negro community. Point integrate negroes and negro activities into all aspects of coverage and content including newspaper articles and television programming. The news media must publish newspapers and produce programs that recognize the existence and activities of negroes as a group within the community and as a part of the larger community. Point recruit more negroes into journalism and broadcasting and promote those who are qualified to positions of significant responsibility. Recruitment should begin in high schools and continue through college where necessary aid for training should be provided. Point improve coordination with police in reporting riot news through advanced planning and cooperate with the police in the designation of police information officers, establishment of information centers and development of mutually acceptable guidelines for riot reporting and the conduct of media personnel. Point accelerate efforts to ensure accurate and responsible reporting of riot and racial news through adoption by all news gathering organizations of stringent internal staff guidelines. Point cooperate in the establishment of a privately organized and funded institution of urban communications to train and educate journalists in urban affairs, recruit and train more negro journalists, develop methods for improving police press relations, review coverage of riots and racial issues, and support continuing research in the urban field. Chapter 16 the future of the cities. By 1985 the negro population in central cities is expected to increase by 72 percent to approximately 20.8 million. Coupled with the continued exodus of white families to the suburbs this growth will produce majority negro populations in many of the nation's largest cities. The future of these cities and of their burgeoning negro populations is grim. Most new employment opportunities are being created in suburbs and outlying areas. This trend will continue unless important changes in public policy are made. In prospect therefore is further deterioration of already inadequate municipal tax spaces in the face of increasing demands for public services and continuing unemployment and poverty among the urban negro population. Three choices are open to the nation. Point we can maintain present policies continuing both the proportion of the nation's resources now allocated to programs for the unemployed and the disadvantaged and the inadequate and failing effort to achieve an integrated society. Point we can adopt a policy of enrichment aimed at improving dramatically the quality of ghetto life while abandoning integration as a goal. Point we can pursue integration by combining ghetto enrichment with policies which will encourage negro movement out of central city areas. The first choice continuance of present policies has ominous consequences for our society. The share of the nation's resources now allocated to programs for the disadvantaged is insufficient to arrest the deterioration of life in central city ghettos. Under such conditions a rising proportion of negroes may come to see in the deprivation and segregation they experience a justification for violent protest or for extending support to now isolated extremists who advocate civil disruption. Large scale and continuing violence could result followed by white retaliation and ultimately the separation of the two communities in a garrison state. Even if violence does not occur the consequences are unacceptable. Development of a racially integrated society extraordinarily difficult today will be virtually impossible when the present black ghetto population of 12.5 million has grown to almost 21 million. To continue present policies is to make permanent the division of our country into two societies one largely negro and poor located in the central cities the other predominantly white and affluent located in the suburbs and in outlying areas. The second choice ghetto enrichment coupled with abandonment of integration is also unacceptable. It is another way of choosing a permanently divided country. Moreover equality cannot be achieved under conditions of nearly complete separation. In a country where the economy and particularly the resources of employment are predominantly white a policy of separation can only relegate negroes to a permanently inferior economic status. We believe that the only possible choice for America is the third a policy which combines ghetto enrichment with programs designed to encourage integration of substantial numbers of negroes into the society outside the ghetto. Enrichment must be an important adjunct to integration for no matter how ambitious or energetic the program few negroes now living in central cities can be quickly integrated. In the meantime large-scale improvement in the quality of ghetto life is essential but this can be no more than an interim strategy. Programs must be developed which will permit substantial negro movement out of the ghettos. The primary goal must be a single society in which every citizen will be free to live and work according to his capabilities and desires not his color. End of section three. Section four of the Kerner commission report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Michelle Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana in December 2019. Reports of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Kerner commission report. Summary part four. Chapter 17 recommendations for national action. Introduction. No American white or black can escape the consequences of the continuing social and economic decay of our major cities. Only a commitment to national action on an unprecedented scale can shape the future compatible with the historic ideals of American society. The great productivity of our economy and a federal revenue system which is highly responsive to economic growth can provide the resources. The major need is to generate new will. The will to tax ourselves to the extent necessary to meet the vital needs of the nation. We have set forth goals and proposed strategies to reach those goals. We discuss and recommend programs not to commit each of us to specific parts of such programs but to illustrate the type and dimension of action needed. The major goal is the creation of a true union, a single society and a single American identity. Toward that goal we propose the following objectives for national action. Point. Opening up opportunities to those who are restricted by racial segregation and discrimination and eliminating all barriers to their choice of jobs, education and housing. Point. Removing the frustration of powerlessness among the disadvantaged by providing the means for them to deal with the problems that affect their own lives and by increasing the capacity of our public and private institutions to respond to these problems. Point. Increasing communication across racial lines to destroy stereotypes, to halt polarization and distrust and hostility and create common ground for efforts toward public order and social justice. We propose these aims to fulfill our pledge of equality and to meet the fundamental needs of a democratic and civilized society, domestic peace and social justice. Employment. Pervasive unemployment and underemployment are the most persistent and serious grievances in minority areas. They are inextricably linked to the problem of civil disorder. Despite growing federal expenditures for manpower development and training programs and sustained general economic prosperity and increasing demands for skilled workers, about two million white and non-white are permanently unemployed. About 10 million are underemployed of which 6.5 million work full-time for wages below the poverty line. The 500,000 hardcore unemployed in the central cities who lack a basic education and are unable to hold a steady job are made up in large part of Negro males between the ages of 18 and 25. In the riot cities which we surveyed, Negroes were three times as likely as whites to hold unskilled jobs which are often part-time, seasonal, low-paying and dead end. Negro males between the ages of 15 and 25 predominated among the rioters. More than 20 percent of the rioters were unemployed and many who were employed held intermittent, low-status, unskilled jobs which they regarded as below their education and ability. The commission recommends that the federal government, point, undertake joint efforts with cities and states to consolidate existing manpower programs to avoid fragmentation and duplication. Point, take immediate action to create two million new jobs over the next three years. One million in the public sector and one million in the private sector to absorb the hardcore unemployed and materially reduce the level of underemployment for all workers black and white. We propose 250,000 public sector and 300,000 private sector jobs in the first year. Point, provide on-the-job training for both public and private employers with reimbursement to private employers for the extra costs of training the hardcore unemployed by contract or by tax credits. Provide tax and other incentives to investment in rural as well as urban poverty areas in order to offer to the rural poor an alternative to migration to urban centers. Point, take new and vigorous action to remove artificial barriers to employment and promotion including not only racial discrimination but in certain cases arrest records or lack of a high school diploma. Strengthen those agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged with eliminating discriminatory practices and provide full support for Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act allowing federal grant-in-aid funds to be withheld from activities which discriminate on grounds of color or race. The commission commends the recent public commitment of the National Council of the Building and Construction Trades Union's AFL-CIO to encourage and recruit Negro membership in apprenticeship programs. This commitment should be intensified and implemented. Education. Education in a democratic society must equip children to develop their potential and to participate fully in American life. For the community at large the schools have discharged this responsibility well but for many minorities and particularly for the children of the ghetto the schools have failed to provide the educational experience which could overcome the effects of discrimination and deprivation. This failure is one of the persistent sources of grievance and resentment within the Negro community. The hostility of Negro parents and students toward the school system is generating increasing conflict and causing disruption within many city school districts. But the most dramatic evidence of the relationship between educational practices and civil disorders lies in the high incidence of riot participation by ghetto youth who have not completed high school. The bleak record of public education for ghetto children is growing worse. In the critical skills, verbal and reading ability, Negro students are falling further behind whites with each year of school completed. The high unemployment and underemployment rate for Negro youth is evidence in part of the growing educational crisis. We support integration as the priority education strategy. It is essential to the future of American society. In this last summer's disorders we have seen the consequences of racial isolation at all levels and of attitudes towards race on both sides produced by three centuries of myth, ignorance and bias. It is indispensable that opportunities for interaction between the races be expanded. We recognize that the growing dominance of pupils from disadvantaged minorities in city school populations will not soon be reversed. No matter how great the effort toward desegregation, many children of the ghetto will not within their school careers attend integrated schools. If existing disadvantages are not to be perpetrated we must drastically improve the quality of ghetto education. Equality of results with all white schools must be the goal. To implement these strategies the commission recommends point sharply increased efforts to eliminate de facto segregation in our schools through substantial federal aid to school systems seeking to desegregate either within the system or in cooperation with neighboring school systems. Point elimination of racial discrimination in northern as well as southern schools by vigorous application of title six of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Point extension of quality early childhood education to every disadvantaged child in the country. Point efforts to improve dramatically schools serving disadvantaged children through substantial federal funding of year-round compensatory education programs improved teaching and expanded experimentation and research. Point elimination of illiteracy through greater federal support for adult basic education. Point enlarged opportunities for parent and community participation in the public schools. Point reoriented vocational education emphasizing work experience training and the involvement of business and industry. Point expanded opportunities for higher education through increased federal assistance to disadvantaged students. Point revision of state aid formulas to assure more per student aid to districts having a high proportion of disadvantaged school-age children. The welfare system. Our present system of public welfare is designed to save money instead of people and tragically ends up doing neither. This system has two critical deficiencies. First it excludes large numbers of persons who are in great need and who if provided a decent level of support might be able to become more productive and self-sufficient. No federal funds are available for millions of men and women who are needy but neither aged, handicapped nor the parents of minor children. Second for those included the system provides assistance well below the minimum necessary for a decent level of existence and imposes restrictions that encourage continued dependency on welfare and undermine self-respect. A welter of statutory requirements and administrative practices and regulations operate to remind recipients that they are considered untrustworthy, promiscuous and lazy. Residents requirements prevent assistance to people in need who are newly arrived in the state. Regular searches of recipients homes violate privacy. Inadequate social services compound the problems. The commission recommends that the federal government acting with state and local governments where necessary reform the existing welfare system to point establish uniform national standards of assistance at least as high as the annual poverty level of income now set by the Social Security Administration at $3,335 per year for an urban family of four. Point require that all states receiving federal welfare contributions participate in the aid to families with dependent children, unemployed parents program, AFDC UP, that permits assistance to families with both father and mother in the home, thus aiding the family while it is still intact. Point bear a substantially greater portion of all welfare costs, at least 90 percent of total payments. Point increase incentives for seeking employment and job training but remove restrictions recently enacted by the Congress that would compel mothers of young children to work. Point provide more adequate social services through neighborhood centers and family planning programs. Point remove the freeze placed by the 1967 welfare amendments on the percentage of children in a state that can be covered by federal assistance. Point eliminate residents requirements. As a long-range goal, the commission recommends that the federal government seek to develop a national system of income supplementation based strictly on need with two broad and basic purposes. Point to provide for those who can work or who do work any necessary supplements in such a way as to develop incentives for fuller employment. Point to provide for those who cannot work and for mothers who decide to remain with their children a minimum standard of decent living and to aid in the saving of children from the prison of poverty that has held their parents. A broad system of supplementation would involve substantially greater federal expenditures than anything now contemplated. The cost will range widely depending on the standard of need accepted as the basic allowance to individuals and families and on the rate at which additional income above this level is taxed. Yet if the deepening cycle of poverty independence on welfare can be broken, if the children of the poor can be given the opportunity to scale the wall that now separates them from the rest of society, the return on this investment will be great indeed. Housing. After more than three decades of fragmented and grossly underfunded federal housing programs, nearly six million substandard housing units remain occupied in the United States. The housing problem is particularly acute in the minority ghettos. Nearly two-thirds of all non-white families living in the central cities today live in neighborhoods marked with substandard housing and general urban blight. Two major factors are responsible. First, many ghetto residents simply cannot pay the rent necessary to support decent housing. In Detroit, for example, over 40 percent of the non-white occupied units in 1960 required rent of over 35 percent of the tenant's income. Second, discrimination prevents access to many non-slum areas, particularly the suburbs where good housing exists. In addition, by creating a back pressure in the racial ghettos, it makes it possible for landlords to break up apartments for denser occupancy and keeps prices and rents of deteriorated ghetto housing higher than they would be in a truly free market. To date, federal programs have been able to do comparatively little to provide housing for the disadvantaged. In the 31-year history of subsidized federal housing, only about 800,000 units have been constructed, with recent production averaging about 50,000 units a year. By comparison, over a period only three years longer, FHA insurance guarantees have made possible the construction of over 10 million middle and upper income units. Two points are fundamental to the commission's recommendations. First, federal housing programs must be given a new thrust aimed at overcoming the prevailing patterns of racial segregation. If this is not done, those programs will continue to concentrate the most impoverished independent segments of the population into the central city ghettos, where there is already a critical gap between the needs of the population and the public resources to deal with them. Second, the private sector must be brought into the production and financing of low and moderate rental housing to supply the capabilities and capital necessary to meet the housing needs of the nation. The commission recommends that the federal government point enact a comprehensive and enforceable federal open housing law to cover the sale or rental of all housing, including single family homes. Point, reorient federal housing programs to place more low and moderate income housing outside of ghettos areas. Point, bring within the reach of low and moderate income families within the next five years 6 million new and existing units of decent housing beginning with 600,000 units in the next year. To reach this goal, we recommend point expansion and modification of the rent supplement program to permit use of supplements for existing housing, thus greatly increasing the reach of the program. Point, expansion and modification of the below market interest rate program to enlarge the interest subsidy to all sponsors and provide interest free loans to non-profit sponsors to cover pre-construction costs and permit sale of projects to non-profit corporations, cooperatives, or condominiums. Point, creation of an ownership supplement program similar to present rent supplements to make home ownership possible for low income families. Point, federal write down of interest rates on loans to private builders constructing moderate rent housing. Point, expansion of the public housing program with emphasis on small units on scattered sites and leasing and turnkey programs. Point, expansion of the model cities program. Point, expansion and reorientation of the urban renewal program to give priority to projects directly assisting low income households to obtain adequate housing. Conclusion, one of the first witnesses to be invited to appear before this commission was Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, a distinguished and perceptive scholar. Referring to the reports of earlier riot commissions, he said, quote, I read that report of the 1919 riot in Chicago and it is as if I were reading the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of 35, the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of 43, the report of the McCone commission on the Watts riot. I must again in candor say to you members of this commission, it is kind of Alice in Wonderland with the same moving picture reshown over and over again the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction, end quote. These words come to our minds as we conclude this report. We have provided an honest beginning. We have learned much, but we have uncovered no startling truths, no unique insights, no simple solutions. The destruction and the bitterness of racial disorder, the harsh polemics of black revolt and white repression have been seen and heard before in this country. It is time now to end the destruction and the violence not only in the streets of the ghetto, but in the lives of people. The summer of 1967 brought racial disorder again to American cities, deepening the bitter residue of fear and threatening the future of all Americans. We are charged by the President with the responsibility to examine this condition and to speak the truth as we see it. Two fundamental questions confront us. How can we as a people end the resort to violence while we build a better society? How can the nation realize the promise of a single society, one nation indivisible, which yet remains unfulfilled? Violence surely cannot build that society. Disruption and disorder will nourish not justice, but repression. Those few who would destroy civil order and the rule of law strike at the freedom of every citizen. They must know that the community cannot and will not tolerate coercion and mob action. We have worked together these past months with the sense of the greatest urgency. Although much remains that can be learned, we have determined to say now what we have learned. We do this in the hope that the American public will understand the nature and gravity of the problem, and that those who have power to act at all levels of government and in all sections of the community will listen and respond. This sense of urgency has led us to consolidate in this single report the interim and final reports called for by the President. To accomplish this it has been necessary to do without the benefit of some studies still under way, which will not be completed for months to come. Certain of these studies, a 15 city general population survey of Negro and white attitudes, a special population survey of attitudes of community leaders, elected officials, administrators, and teachers, a report on the application of mediation techniques, and a further analysis of riot arrestees will be issued later, with other materials as supplemental reports. We believe that to wait until mid-summer to present our findings and recommendations may be to forfeit whatever opportunity exists for this report to affect this year the dangerous climate of tension and apprehension that pervades our cities. Two. Last summer nearly one hundred and fifty cities reported disorders in Negro and in some instances Puerto Rican neighborhoods. These ranged from minor disturbances to major outbursts involving sustained and widespread looting and destruction of property. The worst came during a two-week period in July when large scale disorders erupted first in Newark and then in Detroit, each setting off a chain reaction in neighboring communities. It was in this troubled and turbulent setting that the President of the United States established this commission. He called upon it to guide the country through a thicket of tension conflicting evidence and extreme opinions. In his charge the President framed the commission's mandate in these words. We need to know the answers to three basic questions about these riots. What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again? The three parts of this report offer answers to these questions. Part 1 tells what happened. Chapter 1 is a profile of the 1967 disorders told through a narrative of the summer's events in 10 of the 23 cities surveyed by the commission. Chapter 2 calls on data from all 23 cities to construct an analytical profile. Chapter 3 is the report of the commission on the issue of conspiracy. Part 2 responds to the question why did it happen? Early in our investigation it became clear that the disorders were not the result of contemporary conditions alone. Chapter 5 identifies some of the historical factors that are an essential part of the background of last summer's outbreaks. Chapter 6 through 9 deal with present conditions, examining the impact of ghetto formation, unemployment, and family structures, and conditions of life in the ghettos. The differences between the negro experience and that of other urban immigrant groups. Part 3 contains our answer to the question what can be done. Our recommendations begin with organizing the community to respond more effectively to ghetto needs, and then proceed with police community relations, control of disorders, the administration of justice under emergency conditions, compensation for property damage, the role of the news media, and the national action in the critical areas of employment, education, welfare, and housing. In formulating this report we have attempted to draw on all relevant sources. During closed hearings held from August through December we heard over 130 witnesses, including federal, state, and local officials, experts from the military establishment, and law enforcement agencies, universities, and foundations, negro leaders, and representatives of the business community. We personally visited eight cities in which major disturbances had occurred. We met together for 24 days to review and revise the several drafts of our report. Through our staff we also undertook field surveys in 23 cities in which disorders occurred during the summer of 1967, and took sworn testimony in nine of the cities investigated, and from negro leaders and militants across the country. Expert consultants and advisors supplemented the work of our staff in all the areas covered in our report. Three. Much of our report is directed to the condition of those Americans who are also negroes, and to the social and economic environment in which they live, many in the black ghettos of our cities. But this nation is confronted with the issue of justice for all its people, white as well as black, rural as well as urban. In particular we are concerned with those who have continued to keep faith with society in the preservation of public order. The people of Spanish surname, the American Indian, and other minority groups to whom this country owes so much. We wish it to be clear that in focusing on the negro we do not mean to imply any priority of need. It will not do to fight misery in the black ghetto and leave untouched the reality of injustice and deprivation elsewhere in our society. The first priority is order and justice for all Americans. In speaking of the negro we do not speak of them. We speak of us, for the freedoms and opportunities of all Americans are diminished and imperiled when they are denied to some Americans. The tragic waste of human spirit and resources, the unrecoverable loss to the nation which this denial has already caused and continues to produce no longer can be ignored or afforded. Two premises underlie the work of the commission. That this nation cannot abide violence and disorder if it is to ensure the safety of its people and their progress in a free society. That this nation will deserve neither safety nor progress until it can demonstrate the wisdom and the will to undertake decisive action against the root causes of racial disorder. This report is addressed to the institutions of government and to the conscience of the nation, but even more urgently to the minds and hearts of every citizen. The responsibility for decisive action never more clearly demanded in the history of our country rests on all of us. We do not know whether the tide of racial disorder has begun to recede. We recognize as we must that the conditions underlying the disorders will not be obliterated before the end of this year or the end of the next and that, so long as these conditions exist a potential for disorder remains. But we believe that the likelihood of disorder can be markedly lessened by an American commitment to confront those conditions and eliminate them. A commitment so clear that Negro citizens will know its truth and accept its goal. The most important step toward domestic peace is an act of will. This country can do for its people what it chooses to do. The pages I follow set forth our conclusions and the facts upon which they are based. Our plea for civil order and our recommendations for social and economic change are a call to national action. We are aware of the breadth and scope of those recommendations, but they neither probe deeper nor demand more than the problems which call them forth. End of Section 5. Section 6 of the Kerner Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Colleen McMahon. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Kerner Commission Report. Chapter 1, Profiles of Disorder, Introduction. The president directed the commission to produce a profile of the riots, of the rioters, of their environment, of their victims, of their causes and effects. In response to this mandate, the commission constructed profiles of the riots in 10 of the 23 cities under investigation. Brief summaries of what were often conflicting views and perceptions of confusing episodes, they are, we believe, a fair and accurate picture of what happened. From the profiles, we have sought to build a composite view of the riots as well as of the environment out of which they erupted. The summer of 1967 was not the beginning of the current wave of disorders. Omens of violence had appeared much earlier. 1963-64. In 1963, serious disorders involving both whites and Negroes broke out in Birmingham, Savannah, Cambridge, Maryland, Chicago and Philadelphia. Sometimes the mobs battled each other, more often they fought the police. The most violent encounters took place in Birmingham. Police used dogs, fire hoses and cattle prods against marchers, many of whom were children. White racists shot at Negroes and bombed Negro residences. Negroes retaliated by burning white-owned businesses in Negro areas. On a quiet Sunday morning, a bomb exploded beneath a Negro church. Four young girls in a Sunday school class were killed. In the spring of 1964, the arrest and conviction of civil rights demonstrators provoked violence in Jacksonville. A shot fired from a passing car killed a Negro woman. When a bomb threat forced evacuation of an all-Negro high school, the students stoned policemen and firemen and burned the cars of newsmen. For the first time, Negroes used Molotov cocktails and setting fires. Two weeks later, at a demonstration protesting school segregation in Cleveland, a bulldozer accidentally killed a young white minister. When police moved in to disperse a crowd composed primarily of Negroes, violence erupted. In late June, white segregationists broke through police lines and attacked civil rights demonstrators in Saint Augustine, Florida. In Philadelphia, Mississippi, law enforcement officers were implicated in the lynch murders of three civil rights workers. On July 10, Ku Klux Klansman shot and killed a Negro U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Lemuel Penn as he was driving through Georgia. On July 16, in New York City, several young Negroes walking to summer school classes became involved in a dispute with a white building superintendent. When an off-duty police lieutenant intervened, a 15-year-old boy attacked him with a knife. The officer shot and killed the boy. A crowd of teenagers gathered and smashed store windows. Police arrived in force and dispersed the group. On the following day, the progressive labor movement, a Marxist-Leninist organization, printed and passed out inflammatory leaflets charging the police with brutality. On the second day after the shooting, a rally called by the Congress of Racial Equality to protest the Mississippi lynch murders developed into a march on a precinct police station. The crowd clashed with the police. One person was killed and 12 police officers and 19 citizens were injured. For several days thereafter, the pattern was repeated, despite exhortations of Negro community leaders against violence, protest rallies became uncontrollable. Police battled mobs in Harlem and in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Firemen fought fires started with Molotov cocktails. When bricks and bottles were thrown, police responded with gunfire. Widespread looting followed and many persons were injured. A week later, a riot broke out in Rochester when police tried to arrest an intoxicated Negro youth at a street dance. After two days of violence, the National Guard restored order. During the first two weeks of August, disorders took place in three New Jersey communities. Jersey City, Elizabeth, and Patterson. On August 15th, when a white liquor store owner in the Chicago suburb of Dixmore had a Negro woman arrested for stealing a bottle of whiskey, he was accused of having manhandled her. A crowd gathered in front of the store, broke the store window, and threw rocks at passing cars. The police restored order. The next day, when the disturbance was renewed, a Molotov cocktail set the liquor store fire. Several persons were injured. The final violence of the summer occurred in Philadelphia. A Negro couple's car stalled in an intersection in an area known as the jungle, where with almost 2,000 persons living in each block, there is the greatest incidence of crime, disease, unemployment, and poverty in the city. When two police officers, one white and one black, attempted to move the car, the wife of the owner became abusive and the officers arrested her. Police officers and Negro spectators gathered at the scene. Two nights of rioting, resulting in extensive damage, followed. 1965. In the spring of 1965, the nation's attention shifted back to the south. When civil rights workers staged a nonviolent demonstration in Selma, Alabama, police and state troopers forcibly interrupted their march. Within the next few weeks, racists murdered a white clergyman and a white housewife active in civil rights. In the small Louisiana town of Bogaloosa, when Negro demonstrators attacked by whites received inadequate police protection, the Negroes formed a self-defense group called the Deacons for Defense and Justice. As late as the second week of August, there had been few disturbances outside the south. But on the evening of August 11th, as Los Angeles sweltered in a heat wave, a highway patrolman halted a young Negro driver for speeding. The young man appeared intoxicated and the patrolman arrested him. As a crowd gathered, law enforcement officers were called to the scene. A highway patrolman mistakenly struck a bystander with his billy club. A young Negro woman who was accused of spitting on the police was dragged into the middle of the street. When the police departed, members of the crowd began hurling rocks at passing cars, beating white motorists and overturning cars and setting them on fire. The police reacted hesitantly. Actions they did take further inflamed the people on the streets. The following day the area was calm. Community leaders attempting to mediate between Negro residents and the police received little cooperation from municipal authorities. That evening the previous night's pattern of violence was repeated. Not until almost 30 hours after the initial flare-up did window smashing, looting, and arson began. Yet the police utilized only a small part of their forces. Few police were on hand the next morning when huge crowds gathered in the business district of Watts two miles from the location of the original disturbance and began looting. In the absence of police response the looting became bolder and spread into other areas. Hundreds of women and children from five housing projects clustered in or near Watts took part. Around noon extensive firebombing began. Few white persons were attacked. The principal intent of the rioters now seemed to be to destroy property owned by Watts in order to drive white exploiters out of the ghetto. The chief of police asked for national guard help but the arrival of the military units was delayed for several hours. When the guardsmen arrived they together with police made heavy use of firearms. Reports of sniper fire increased. Several persons were killed by mistake. Many more were injured. 36 hours after the first guard units arrived the main force of the riot had been blunted. Almost 4,000 persons were arrested. 34 were killed and hundreds injured. Approximately 35 million dollars in damage had been inflicted. The Los Angeles riot, the worst in the United States since the Detroit riot of 1943, shocked all who had been confident that race relations were improving in the north and evoked a new mood in Negro ghettos across the country. 1966. The events of 1966 made it appear the domestic turmoil had become part of the American scene. In March a fight between several Negroes and Mexican Americans resulted in a new flare up in Watts. In May after a police officer accidentally shot and killed a Negro, demonstrations by Negro militants again increased tension in Los Angeles. Evidence was accumulating that a major proportion of riot participants were youths. Increasing race pride, skepticism about their job prospects and dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of their education caused unrest among students in Negro colleges and high schools throughout the country. Students and youths were the principal participants in at least six of the 13 spring and early summer disorders of 1966. July 12th, 1966 was a hot day in Chicago. Negro youngsters were playing in water gushing from an illegally opened fire hydrant. Two police officers arriving on the scene closed the hydrant. A Negro youth turned it on again and the police officers arrested him. A crowd gathered. Police reinforcements arrived. As the crowd became unruly, seven Negro youth were arrested. Rumors spread that the arrested youths had been beaten and that police were turning off fire hydrants in Negro neighborhoods but leaving them on in white areas. Sporadic window breaking, rock throwing, and fire bombing lasted for several hours. Most of the participants were teenagers. In Chicago, as in other cities, the longstanding grievances of the Negro community needed only minor incidents to trigger violence. In 1961, when Negroes, after being evacuated from a burning tenement, had been sheltered in a church in an all-white area, a crowd of residents had gathered and threatened to attack the church unless the Negroes were removed. Segregated schools and housing had led to repeated picketing and marches by civil rights organizations. When marchers had gone into white neighborhoods, they had been met on several occasions by KKK signs and crowds throwing eggs and tomatoes. In 1965, when a Chicago fire truck had killed a Negro woman in an accident, Negroes had congregated to protest against the fire station's all-white compliment. Rock throwing and looting had broken out. More than 170 persons were arrested in two days. On the evening of July 13, 1966, the day after the fire hydrant incident, rock throwing, looting, and fire bombing began again. For several days thereafter, the pattern of violence was repeated. Police responding to calls were subjected to random gunfire. Rumors spread. The press talked in highly exaggerated terms of guerrilla warfare and sniper fire. Before the police and 4200 National Guardsmen managed to restore order, scores of civilians and police had been injured. There were 533 arrests including 155 juveniles. Three Negroes were killed by stray bullets, among them a 13-year-old boy and a 14-year-old pregnant girl. Less than a week later, Ohio National Guardsmen were mobilized to deal with an outbreak of rioting that continued for four nights in the huff section of Cleveland. It is probable that Negro extremists, though they neither instigated nor organized the disorder, exploited and enlarged it. Amidst widespread reports of sniper fire, four Negroes including one young woman were killed. Many others, several children among them, were injured. Law enforcement officers were responsible for two of the deaths, a white man firing from a car for a third, and a group of young white vigilantes for the fourth. Some news media keeping tally sheets of the disturbances began to apply the term riot to acts of vandalism and relatively minor disorders. At the end of July, the National States Rights Party, a white extremist organization that abdicates deporting Negroes and other minorities, preached racial hatred at a series of rallies in Baltimore. Bands of white youths were incited into chasing and beating Negroes. A court order halted the rallies. Forty-three disorders and riots were reported during 1966. Although there were considerable variations in circumstances intensity and length, they were usually ignited by a minor incident fueled by antagonism between the Negro population and the police. Spring, 1967. In the spring of 1967, disorders broke out at three Southern Negro universities at which SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a militant anti-white organization, had been attempting to organize the students. On Friday, April 7th, learning that Stokely Carmichael was speaking at two primarily Negro universities, Fisk and Tennessee A&I in Nashville, and receiving information that some persons were preparing to riot, the police adopted an emergency riot plan. On the following day, Carmichael and others, including South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, spoke at a symposium at Vanderbilt University. That evening, the Negro operator of a restaurant located near Fisk University summoned police to arrest an allegedly intoxicated Negro soldier. Within a few minutes, students, many of them members of SNCC, began to pick at the restaurant. A squad of riot police arrived and soon became the focus of attention. Spectators gathered. When a city bus was halted and attacked by members of the crowd, a Negro police lieutenant fired five shots into the air. Rocks and bottles were thrown, and additional police were called into the area. Officers fired a number of shots over the heads of the crowd. The students and spectators gradually dispersed. On the following evening, after negotiations between students and police broke down, crowds again began forming. Police fired over their heads and shots were fired back at the police. On the fringes of the campus, several white youths aimed shots at a police patrol wagon. A few days later, when police raided the home of several young Negro militants, they confiscated a half-dozen bottles prepared as Molotov cocktails. About a month later, students at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi were standing around after a political rally, when two Negro police officers pursued a speeding car driven by a Negro student onto the campus. When the officers tried to arrest the driver, the students interfered. The police called for reinforcements. A crowd of several hundred persons quickly gathered and a few rocks were thrown. On the following evening, an even larger crowd assembled. When police attempted to disperse it by gunfire, three persons were hit. One of them, a young Negro, died the next day. The National Guard restored order. Six days later, on May 16th, two separate Negro protests were taking place in Houston. One group was picketing a garbage dump in a Negro residential neighborhood where a Negro child had drowned. Another was demonstrating at a junior high school on the grounds that Negro students were disciplined more harshly than white. That evening, college students who had participated in the protests returned to the campus of Texas Southern University. About 50 of them were grouped around a 21-year old student, DW, a Vietnam veteran, who was seeking to stimulate further protest action. A dispute broke out and DW reportedly slapped another student. When the student threatened DW, he left, armed himself with a pistol and returned. In response to the report of a disturbance, two unmarked police cars with four officers arrived. Two of the officers questioned DW, discovered he was armed with a pistol and arrested him. A short time later, when one of the police cars returned to the campus, it was met by rocks and bottles thrown by students. As police called for reinforcements, sporadic gunshots reportedly came from the men's dormitory. The police returned the fire. For several hours, gunfire punctuated unsuccessful attempts by community leaders to negotiate a truce between the students and the police. When several tar barrels were set afire in the street and shooting broke out again, police decided to enter the dormitory. A patrolman struck by a ricocheting bullet was killed. After clearing all 480 occupants from the building, police searched it and found one shotgun and two 22 caliber pistols. The origin of the shot that killed the officer was not determined. As the summer of 1967 approached, Americans conditioned by three years of reports of riots expected violence, but they had no answers to hard questions. What was causing the turmoil? Was it organized? And if so, by whom? Was there a pattern to the disorders?